Chapter 23
Healthcare
In This Chapter
AstraZeneca
Independence Blue Cross
Partners HealthCare
The healthcare market is broad and complicated, comprising care providers, institutions (hospitals and clinics), healthcare partnerships, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies. Although each institution has its set of technology and business issues, they’re all interrelated. The healthcare industry has many challenges, ranging from issues related to privacy legislation to the need to provide more holistic patient care for less money. Healthcare insurance providers need to manage the relationships with both providers of healthcare and the needs of consumers. Pharmaceutical companies need to successfully leverage data and best practices across the entire healthcare ecosystem to ensure that they’re developing medicines that address emerging needs.
Traditionally, each department and sector within healthcare has been siloed to an extreme. Even within a single company, minimal knowledge or data sharing happened between business units. Therefore, one reason why the healthcare market is moving to SOA is that it can help these companies break down these silos. In this chapter, we take a look at three different companies that represent different aspects of the healthcare market. AstraZeneca implemented a SOA pilot to help improve its effectiveness in working with partners. Independence Blue Cross deployed SOA to decrease costs associated with application development. Partners HealthCare ...
