By Mike Drummond
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 14, 1999
SAN DIEGO -- Microsoft employees used to joke that
early versions of Windows were like rough, single-ply
toilet paper found in lesser motels -- you might not like it, but sooner or later, you'd have to use it.
The Redmond, Wash., giant has since smoothed the
wrinkles from its family of flagship operating systems.
Windows 98, Windows CE -- the mini-Windows operating
system for portable devices -- and industrial-strength
Windows NT are running millions of personal computers
digital gizmos throughout the world.
And now, having conquered the world of PCs, Microsoft is
redoubling its efforts to invade a dozen so called "vertical
markets," from retail to real estate to health care.
Clear evidence of this reinvigorated attack comes
tomorrow, when Bill Gates, chairman and chief executive
of Microsoft, delivers the keynote address for the
fifth-annual Windows on Healthcare conference at the San
Diego Convention Center. The event kicks off today and
ends Thursday.
Microsoft Healthcare Users Group, or MS-HUG, has been
holding the event since 1995. Ostensibly independent of
Microsoft, the group of technical and software engineers in
the health field nonetheless owes much to the Redmond
mothership -- particularly this year.
It marks the first time the world's richest man -- worth
about $105 billion yesterday, according to one estimate --
has delivered a keynote at the Windows on Healthcare
event. As one analyst noted, Microsoft does not deploy
Gates lightly.
"This is by far Microsoft's largest presence" at the
Windows on Healthcare conference, said Kim Ray, event
organizer and general manager for vertical industry
programs at Ziff-Davis. "They are putting a tremendous
amount of resources into this event."
She expects about 2,000 attendees, about 300 more than
last year's event in Orlando, Fla.
Microsoft smells money in the health-care field, which
unlike other markets has been slow to embrace the Internet.
But hospitals and health-care providers are increasingly
cozying up to the idea of "e-healthcare," where billing,
patient information, and diagnostic and monitoring data can
take place in cyberspace.
This area alone represents a potential $300 billion
industry, according to Health Resources Publishing.
Dozens of Internet sites, from drkoop.com to WebMD,
offer an array of online medical services.
But that's only part of the equation. Health care
organizations also are looking to meld the business side of
their computing environments with the patient-care side. In
so doing, they often are looking at alternatives to the legacy UNIX mainframe computers in use at two-thirds of U.S.
hospitals.
Microsoft would like to replace all of these disparate
computing platforms with Windows operating systems,
then integrate them with the Web into what Gates refers to
as the "digital nervous system."
"There's not enough hours in the day to talk about all the
things that are wrong with the health-care system and how
the Internet can help," said Eric Brown, an analyst at
Forrester Research, which just started covering the
health-care field.
The Web offers a standard way for insurers, providers and
patients to communicate. Online billing can be done in a
matter of days or weeks, instead of months. Patients can
communicate with doctors, who can use new Web-based
technologies to monitor pacemakers and a host of other
medical devices.
Brown noted that many others have tried and failed to
seamlessly integrate billing, business and patient
information systems.
"Microsoft sees an opportunity that would be a huge win,"
Brown said. "It could ripple down to backend (computer
network) solutions for Microsoft products to be
implemented pretty broadly."
Microsoft is making marked inroads into health care. Five
years ago there were about three health care-related
software applications for Windows NT. Today, there are
more than 460, said Paul Smolke, health industry manager
at Microsoft.
"Momentum is starting to take hold in the health-care
sector," Smolke said. "Health-care organizations are
getting more comfortable with security and reliability" of
Windows-based platforms."
That confidence has been tested this year with the Melissa
virus that attacked Windows-based computers, and more
recently with the disclosure of security breaches in the
company's free Hotmail e-mail system.
Nonetheless, many hospitals from California to the
Carolinas are migrating to Microsoft.
Smolke said that the forthcoming version of Windows NT
-- Windows 2000 -- will offer more security features.
All six Scripps hospitals in San Diego County ditched their
UNIX mainframe computer systems and made the move to
Windows NT and Windows 95 last year.
Ronald Kelley, Scripps' director of technical services,
said NT has proved to be a secure platform, but that
computers running Windows 95 and Windows 98 on a
network are prone to security breaches.
Scripps uses Windows 95 on computers that can't run NT.
Kelley said communication has improved since Scripps
deployed Windows on 3,000 desktop computers throughout
its health-care system.
"Most of our users . . . are really happy with it mostly
because they're familiar with it," Kelley said. "They know
how to use it and get things done on their own."
Moreover, it's easier and less expensive to hire people
who have expertise in Windows NT than UNIX, Kelley
added.
Meanwhile, there are those who, like the traveler with his
roll of one-ply at the budget motel, have found that they
have to use Windows whether they like it or not.
Consider e.Digital, which makes a flagship product called the Micro OS operating system, a super-small platform
used in digital voice recorders for physicians. Doctors
record sessions with patients and note medical dosages
and other information, which then can be fed into a
computer.
The San Diego-based company, formerly known as Norris
Communications, signed a $3 million deal with Lanier
Worldwide to deliver the devices to health-care providers this year.
In trumpeting its operating system, an e.Digital official told a reporter this year that Windows CE was "bloatware," a derisive term to describe fat, slow software.
Yet not even e.Digital can escape Microsoft.
The digital recorders use a high-speed infrared link or a
docking station to transfer voice data files to a computer --which has to be running Windows.
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