by Don Burnett

Microsoft Health Launch New Site for HealthCare Designers, and releases Common User Interface Controls for both Silverlight and WPF

From the site: "The Microsoft Health Common User Interface (CUI) provides User Interface Design Guidance and Toolkit controls that address a wide range of patient safety concerns for healthcare organizations worldwide, allowing a new generation of safer, more usable and compelling health applications to be quickly and easily created.

This site is aimed at user interface designers, application developers and patient safety experts who want to find out more about the benefits of a standardized approach to user interface design.

With the Microsoft Health CUI you can:

• Interactively browse and download our published Design Guidance documents
• Interact with our on-line implementations of the Toolkit controls and samples that conform to the Design Guidance
• Download and install the Toolkit controls for use in Microsoft Visual Studio
• View our new Showcase, which shows how the adoption of the Design Guidance has benefited clinical application and healthcare providers through testimonials, and provides practical and innovative scenarios through demonstrators
• Visit the Roadmap, to learn about the CUI program schedule, the architecture of the Toolkit controls, and the delivery lifecycle used to create the Design Guidance, Toolkit controls and samples."

Controls Available on Codeplex for WPF and Silverlight Under Microsoft Public License

Patient safety is a critical issue for healthcare organizations worldwide. Microsoft has been working with the National Health Service (NHS) in England to improve patient safety by creating a common look and feel for NHS systems through the NHS Common User Interface (CUI) Program. This partnership initiative is in conjunction with the UK government agency called NHS Connecting for Health. Microsoft is now publishing the Design Guidance produced through this collaboration and providing the healthcare community with access to the associated Toolkit controls.

For designers, the same WPF and Silverlight controls were developed from the same source, and styling is consistent.

Microsoft Patient Journey Demonstrator (coming soon..)

The Patient Journey Demonstrator conceptualizes an end-to-end journey where a specific clinical scenario is used to illustrate how an integrated, patient-centric care record can transition seamlessly between care settings. It demonstrates how data can be accessed and entered from many of the care sources experienced along the patient journey.

In this scenario, a man with suspected heart disease is examined by his family doctor. Using decision support tools, his doctor decides that the best course of action is to refer him for further tests. The scenario then tracks the activities that take place from the initial consultation through secondary care to an Angiogram.

Pretty exciting news, a toolkit with common user interface controls that work on both Windows platform applications and the web using Silverlight for healthcare..