Just released this morning, Microsoft announced that it has landed Golden Living, a provider of long-term care (LTC) and like services for the elderly and disabled.  Similar to the New York Presbyterian and the Caritas Christi Health wins, Golden Living will be adopting Amalga UIS for internal aggregation of a customer’s health data to facilitate care and HealthVault as the customer control repository of personal health information (PHI).

In each of these cases, these organizations are using the Amalga/HealthVault combination as a competitive differentiator.  It remains to be seen if it will actually drive future business, but for today, it does put these organizations out front of their competitors in the adoption of new technologies and approaches in support of collaborative care that goes beyond the clinician to the community.

What is particularly interesting with this announcement is that the actual users of HealthVault at Golden Living are unlikely to be the residents of Golden Living facilities but their children, nephews and nieces.  This may provide Microsoft one more avenue to educate the market, getting consumers comfortable with the concept of online storage and sharing of PHI (privacy and security) and understanding the utility that such services as HealthVault’s brings to market.