19th December 2012 – Ascribe, a leading provider of clinical IT solutions, has today announced that they are supporting Microsoft Corp.’s HDInsight. HDInsight is Microsoft’s distribution of Apache Hadoop for the Windows Azure and Windows Server platforms. Through this support, Ascribe will provide health and social care professionals with real-time analysis of large volumes of data, enabling clinicians to make better informed clinical and operational decisions to improve the safety, quality and cost-effectiveness of care.

Data relevant to the health and social care sector is growing at a huge rate. The rise in patient data is fuelled not only by the increasing use of electronic medical records but also by the increasing application of patient portals and most importantly, the use of social media and additional content generated by the internet. Decision making, based on available data, has always been a complex task but with so many more data points to be considered, the issue of complexity has increased and only now are tools becoming available that enable analysis of data points.

Microsoft HDInsight is an Enterprise-ready Hadoop service, based on the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP), enabling customers to seamlessly store and process data of all types, including structured, unstructured, and real-time data in order to achieve rich insights and drive operational efficiencies. This technology can process increasing volumes of data, from disparate data sources, in differing formats in closer to real-time – so the information can be used to improve business and clinical efficiency and quality. Ascribe have agreed to work with Microsoft on this technology in the health and social care sector.

“Ascribe are delighted to have been selected to participate in the programme,” Head of Ascribe’s Business and Clinical Intelligence division, Paul Henderson, says. “Many healthcare organisations have good business and clinical intelligence based on their clinical systems, however there is still knowledge locked away in case notes and other text, which would be useful if only they could get at it, in an efficient way. If you add the data generated by patients and the public using social media – either about them personally or their environment – then you have huge volumes of insightful data. The challenge is sifting it to find the golden pieces of knowledge that make a difference to the way we work. We believe that the Microsoft platform is uniquely placed to address this problem and are very much looking forward to participating in the programme.”

Equally Microsoft recognises the importance of working with programme participants and early-adopter customers. A Director of Server and Tools Marketing at Microsoft, Bob Baker, adds: “Combined with the business intelligence capabilities of SQL Server 2012, HDInsight enables customers to obtain great insight from structured and unstructured data. We see the market around these capabilities as growing rapidly, and Ascribe is well positioned to deliver in the Healthcare sector. We are pleased that Ascribe is supporting Microsoft HDInsight, and we are excited to see how this technology will drive improvements in health services around the world.”