IBM SALES AND DISTRIBUTION
Solution Brief
Highlights
● Improve operational effectiveness to
contain costs and realize best-in-class
operations
● Achieve better quality and outcomes
to grow patient satisfaction and
improve operational efficiency
● Deliver collaborative care for preven-
tion and wellness to support optimal
health and well-being for all individuals
Solutions for healthcare
providers
We’re all aware of soaring medical expenses, concerns for quality of
care, patient safety and information privacy, and gaps in access to care.
With aging populations, the growing incidence and cost of treating
chronic health conditions and increasing costs of new medical technol-
ogy, healthcare costs will continue to rise. While cost shifting among
public and private insurers is disguising the burden of growing costs, it
is not reducing the real cost of healthcare. As individuals, we must
make better health-related choices if societies are to ever have a chance
of reining in healthcare costs.
Hospitals today face many challenges including an economic recession,
increases in uninsured care, declining margins, rising bad debt and
growing competition for outpatient services. While containing medical
and administrative costs and boosting productivity and efficiency, hos-
pitals must also improve clinical quality, patient safety and clinical out-
comes. And they must do all of this amid big changes caused by
healthcare reform. The old, paper-based, labor-intensive ways of doing
business simply won’t work in the new healthcare environment. To sur-
vive and thrive, healthcare organizations must do more with less—and
they must make smarter use of information technology.
Interconnected technologies can help healthcare organizations change
the way healthcare works. Organizations can get smarter by becoming
more:
● Instrumented: Use information generated by tools such as elec-
tronic medical records, patient monitoring devices, smart med-
ical devices and Web and communications technologies to
more proactively manage preventive and therapeutic care.
● Interconnected: Connect patients, caregivers and communities
to information and to each other to make smarter acute,
chronic and preventive care decisions, using new ways of inter-
acting such as integrated workflows, portals, health information
exchanges and social networking.
● Intelligent: Continually analyze massive quantities of medical
and financial data to measure and improve clinical performance
and boost financial performance.
IBM SALES AND DISTRIBUTION
Solution Brief

At the center of smarter healthcare is a long-term, comprehen-
sive relationship between the patient and the primary care
physician, who works with medical specialists, hospitals and
other medical services to produce better overall patient health.
The value of this collaborative relationship can be transforma-
tive, as high-value health services are delivered in a more effec-
tive and efficient way throughout an individual’s life. Quality
and safety, health and wellness promotion, disease prevention
and collaborative care are foundational principles. Every care-
giver in the clinical care chain is armed with the right technol-
ogy and tools to provide the best care at the best price while
maximizing value. Besides caregivers, patients have easy access
to personal information to support their own healthy lifestyle
choices.
A smarter health system consistently delivers safe, high-quality,
and cost-effective care, because it is:
accelerators—part of the IBM® Health Integration Framework,
our service-oriented architecture platform—are built into our
solutions, supporting heterogeneous environments and open
standards to help you to realize value faster. Our solutions offer
the flexibility to help organizations—from medical practices to
multi-hospital organizations—customize the course that’s right
for them.
Improve operational effectiveness
Provider organizations need to build flexibility into operations
to support cost reduction and achieve best-in-class clinical
processes. Cost containment initiatives, process efficiency, IT
optimization and regulatory compliance can all contribute to
greater operational effectiveness. Organizations can leverage
information to gain deeper insights and a better understanding
of their business processes and care delivery systems, leading to
improved clinical performance and operational efficiencies.

● Centered on individuals who are empowered to be

Our clients have seen measurable value from IBM solutions that
responsible and make more informed health choices.
combine deep healthcare expertise, innovative methodologies
● Information-led and evidence-based to promote the use
and technologies to solve healthcare problems. Flexible delivery
of clinical best practices and ensure medical care is deliv-
choices provide cost-effective approaches to alleviate resource
ered in more uniform, cost-effective ways.
constraints, freeing up organizations to focus on strategic core
● Private and secure to safeguard individual privacy,
initiatives.
embrace informed consent and protect information.
● Based on open healthcare industry standards that sup-
Our solutions for improving operational effectiveness include:
port cooperation, collaborative workflows and informa-
tion sharing.
● Partnership-driven among individuals, care teams, insti-
● Clinical and business optimization strategy and execu-
tutions and other stakeholders to support collaborative tion roadmaps.
innovation of products, services and business models.
● IBM Cognos® software for performance management.
● Continuously learning to seamlessly embed best prac-
● Healthcare supply chain optimization.
tices and medical knowledge into clinical and business
● Business process management (BPM).
workflows.
● Real-time location services.
● Efficient with built-in flexibility to respond dynamically
● IBM Maximo® enterprise asset management.
to changing needs and the latest medical breakthroughs.
● IBM Grid Medical Archive Solution.
● IBM Healthcare Image and Information Grid.
Smarter healthcare is enabled through information technology
● IBM service management.
including applications, intelligent devices, health informatics,
● Identity and access management for healthcare.
on-demand information sharing and effective management and
● IBM Internet Security Systems solutions for healthcare.
governance.
● Data security and business resilience.
● Server, storage and desktop virtualization.
● Data center optimization and energy efficiency.
IBM solutions for healthcare organizations ● IBM Managed Business Process Services.
Provider organizations need to improve operational effective- ● Cloud computing infrastructures, application manage-
ness, achieve better quality and outcomes, and deliver collabora- ment services and strategic outsourcing.
tive care for prevention and wellness. In each area, IBM offers
solutions to support your priorities. Healthcare-specific
IBM SALES AND DISTRIBUTION
Solution Brief
Achieve better quality and outcomes
As providers continue to optimize clinical and business opera-
tions, they are turning their attention to solving key problems.
Improving quality and outcomes, competing on cost and
quality of services, and increasing operational transparency are
key areas of focus. Integrating clinical, financial and research
information—and gaining insights from applying data
analytics—can help improve outcomes, lower costs and increase
patient value. Public health officials may employ similar
approaches to collect, share and analyze health information
critical to managing disease outbreaks and outcomes.
IBM solutions combine deep clinical and business expertise,
integrated enterprise information and advanced business intelli-
gence capabilities and tools, enterprise data warehouses, score-
cards and dashboard views to create intelligent environments
that address specific healthcare problems. Our solutions also
ensure information availability, security and compliance.
Our solutions for achieving better quality and outcomes include:
● Health analytics strategy and execution roadmaps.
● IBM InfoSphere™ Clinical Analytics platform.
● Information-led Transformation (IBM Information
Agenda™ for healthcare providers).
● IBM Cognos software for business intelligence and per-
formance management.
● Data quality and governance.
● IBM Optim™ for change data management, data privacy
and archival.
● Disease surveillance and modeling.
Deliver collaborative care for prevention and wellness
Changes in how healthcare is delivered, how it is paid for, how
quality is measured and how patients experience care are accel-
erating with increased use of information technology. To pre-
pare to participate in emerging care delivery environments that
span acute, chronic and preventive care, healthcare organiza-
tions are embracing information technology.
The delivery of integrated patient information at the point of
care at the time critical clinical decisions are made is core to
these care models. IBM solutions support this new model, deliv-
ering the right information to the right clinical decision makers
at the right time.
IBM solutions include electronic medical record (EMR) imple-
mentation, patient portals, health information exchanges linking
caregivers throughout a community, and advanced data analytics
tools. Security is never an afterthought in these solutions. Our
solutions feature security-rich, role-based access to information
in near real-time, as well as smart, integrated processes that con-
tribute to better care experiences.
Our solutions for delivering collaborative care for prevention
and wellness include:
● EMR integration services and infrastructure platforms.
● National care team, patient and clinician health portals.
● Creative financing options.
● Healthcare interoperability.
● Health Information Exchanges.
● Enterprise mobility for healthcare providers, including
IBM services for end-to-end mobility, wireless and con-
verged communications.
● Patient-centered collaborative care (medical home).
● Connected home health.
● Identity and access management for healthcare
● IBM Internet Security Systems solutions for healthcare
A prescription for change
To prepare for emerging care models, IBM recommends that
healthcare organizations pursue three initiatives.
● Improve operational effectiveness: Build flexibility and
efficiency into clinical and business processes and sys-
tems. We can help you realize cost savings and develop a
vision for quality and affordable care and then prioritize
IT infrastructure strategies to achieve this vision.
● Achieve better quality and outcomes: Create intelligence
and knowledge using instrumented processes and patient
information that can be shared in a collaborative way to
improve outcomes and healthcare value. We can help
you build an environment in which information is sys-
tematically integrated, analyzed and broadly available to
enable meaningful interactions and more informed deci-
sion making.
● Deliver collaborative care for prevention and wellness:
Connect patients, care teams and institutions to support
clinical teams. We can help you create higher patient
value, grow competitive advantage and realize cost sav-
ings through increased collaboration and information
sharing.
IBM SALES AND DISTRIBUTION
Solution Brief

Why IBM
Healthcare organizations must act quickly to adapt to changing market require-
ments. IBM understands the great implications this holds for people, operations © Copyright IBM Corporation 2009
and technology. As an IT and healthcare leader, our vision, commitment to
IBM Corporation
reform and long track record in the healthcare industry demonstrate our dedi- Route 100
cated focus on your most critical needs. Somers, NY 10589
Produced in the USA
IBM, our healthcare clients and thousands of IBM Business Partners are com- October 2009
mitted to making smarter healthcare a reality. When you need reliable health- All Rights Reserved
care and IT expertise and experience or research innovation, our solutions for IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Cognos,
healthcare providers are here to help. Maximo, InforSphere, Information
Agenda and Optim are trademarks or
registered trademarks of International
IBM provides a variety of flexible payment options that assist healthcare organ- Business Machines Corporation in the
izations in accelerating the adoption and acquisition of information technology United States, other countries, or both.
solutions. Credit-qualified clients are able to reduce upfront costs of implemen- If these and other IBM trademarked
terms are marked on their first
tation of IBM and IBM Business Partner solutions. Our financial offerings can occurrence in this information with a
also help simplify major transformation projects through fixed payment sched- trademark symbol (® or ™), these
ules and payables consolidation, as well as an operating model to assist with symbols indicate U.S. registered or
internal approvals, efficiency, and control. For more information, visit: common law trademarks owned by
IBM at the time this information was
ibm.com/financing
published. Such trademarks may also be
registered or common law trademarks
in other countries. A current list of
For more information
IBM trademarks is available on the
To learn more about our solutions for healthcare providers, please contact your Web at “Copyright and trademark
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