IBM today announced that it will open a new Global Healthcare Centre of Excellence located in La Gaude, France.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO )

Expanding its global healthcare capability, the Centre of Excellence will help IBM healthcare clients design and create healthcare and life sciences solutions that improve care delivery, predict and prevent disease and enable smarter individual health and wellness.

Specialists at the Centre will provide deep levels of industry knowledge and expertise in areas such as research, design and solutions across electronic medical and health records, healthcare analytics, business intelligence and patient-centric solutions.

From this base in the IBM Business Solutions Centre at La Gaude, the Centre of Excellence will draw upon the knowledge and expertise of up to 4,000 IBM healthcare IT and healthcare process experts worldwide.

"The new La Gaude Centre is an important aspect of our global strategy," said Sean Hogan, Vice President, IBM Global Healthcare & Life Sciences. "Not only can we showcase healthcare best practice capabilities that we observe around the world, but we can also create a collaborative environment in which to work with clients to create new insights and innovations that improve the value that our health systems provide to citizens."

The Centre will host a range of immersive solutions showcases that illustrate healthcare scenarios. Featuring applications running in home, general practitioner clinic, hospital and emergency response centre environments, visiting clients will be able to experience real-life situations to help them visualise and jointly develop smarter systems.

Focusing on healthcare analytics, business intelligence, electronic medical and health records, identity management and unified communications, the Centre will offer experiential demonstrations; architecture consultancy; proof of concept and prototype demonstrations; integration of partner solutions; and, complex solutions design.

It will also provide prototyping across areas such as RFID, telemedicine, regional and national health portals, telematics and mobile applications.

"By establishing the Centre of Excellence, we can enable our clients to build collaborative, co-ordinated healthcare systems and electronic medical records that stimulate integration and efficiency," said Francois Commagnac, Leader, Global Healthcare Centre of Excellence, IBM. "As an increasing number of clients seek to implement instrumented, interconnected and intelligent systems, the Centre is an ideal environment in which to experience and demonstrate the value of Smarter Healthcare."

Elsewhere in Europe, IBM drives healthcare innovation at its Zurich Research Laboratory. Researchers at Zurich successfully developed the Anatomic and Symbolic Mapper Engine (ASME), which enables doctors to navigate a 3D virtual map of the human body and access medical information graphically. ASME is currently being piloted at the Thy-Mors hospital in northern Denmark.

  Contact information:

  Joe Hanley
  IBM Media Relations, Europe
  hanleyj@uk.ibm.com
  +44 (0)78 0350 2318

  Constance Bordes
  IBM Media Relations, France
  constance-bordes@fr.ibm.com
  +33 (0)1 4905 5297

  Laurie Friedman
  IBM Media Relations, U.S.
  laurie1@us.ibm.com
  914 499 4608

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact: laurie1@us.ibm.com

Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO

SOURCE: IBM Corporation