Accenture Inks Health IT Deal With StanfordAccenture Inks Health IT Deal With Stanford

Technology management and consulting company Accenture has signed an agreement with Stanford Hospital & Clinics aimed at improving Stanford's patient care platform, which connects the hospital and outpatient clinics to its electronic medical record system.

Announced Thursday, the agreement calls for Accenture to collaborate with Stanford over a seven-year period to enhance clinical processes and deploy new capabilities, including business intelligence, health analytic tools, and patient-centered technology. Accenture will assume certain operational and administrative responsibilities for Stanford Hospital's IT environment.

"Our goal is to utilize technology to benefit patients while assuring that we have the most advanced capabilities and a cost-effective solution for managing operations," Carolyn Byerly, chief information officer at Stanford Hospital & Clinics, said in a statement.

Stanford Hospital & Clinics treats complex disorders in areas such as cardiovascular care, cancer treatment, neurosciences, surgery, and organ transplants. It is part of the Stanford University Medical Center, along with the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford.

Stanford Hospital will migrate to Accenture's virtualization offering, which will be a key component of the hospital's new technology infrastructure. Accenture will manage applications and infrastructure including applicable data centers, network, help desks, and device support.

"Few hospitals have reached Stanford's technology sophistication and application of IT to patient care. We are honored to have been selected to help achieve their technology vision," Mark A. Knickrehm, global managing director of Accenture's health industry practice, said in a statement. "The use of IT in healthcare is growing dramatically and our support to Stanford Hospital demonstrates the value of Accenture's connected health vision to hospitals."

Earlier this year Stanford Hospital received the highest level designation for its electronic medical record system from the HIMSS Analytics Database, the industry organization focused on the use of IT in healthcare.

Stanford Hospital is the fourth healthcare organization, and one of only six nationwide, among more than 5,000 in the HIMSS Analytics Database, to achieve this top-level designation, known as Stage 7. Stanford Hospital was recently named to the "Most Wired" list in the annual Hospitals & Health Networks survey.