AdvancedMD Announces Significant Performance Improvements Taking SaaS-based Medical Practice Optimization Software to the Next Level.

AdvancedMD[R] Software, Inc., the leader in all-in-one, web-based practice management, Electronic Health Record (EHR), and billing applications for medical practices and medical billing services, and Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKAM), the leader in powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, announced significant performance improvements to the AdvancedMD medical practice optimization software platform.

In its ongoing effort to improve medical practice productivity and provide a superior practice optimization solution, AdvancedMD has performance-optimized its site and added Akamai's Web Application Accelerator service to speed access to its solution across the public Internet. This technology intelligently routes data across efficient Internet paths, automatically re-routing around "traffic jam" areas on the web.

Through these improvements, AdvancedMD has reduced bandwidth utilization out of its SaaS platform by 73%, as measured between April 2009 and January 2010. In addition, it has achieved a 30% improvement in average transaction round-trip time, a measure of application responsiveness. As a result, AdvancedMD offers a more scalable platform and customers experience these improvements as faster application response rates and a decrease in the burden on their own Internet connectivity capacity.

During testing, data collected by Akamai demonstrated it could speed the performance of a sample user click-path by up to 150% in the US and up to 350% globally. A common software application response test procedure is to define a specific user click-path, which is a set of mouse clicks through the application to execute common tasks, like looking up a patient record, while measuring how quickly the application responds at each step. This test was repeatedly performed from different locations around the globe in order to estimate an average of the overall global experience.

After participating in the Akamai upgrade, Derrick Berger, co-owner and office manager of Brazosport Urology, Lake Jackson, TX, said: "Performance has improved 50-75 percent overall. Screens refresh quicker than before, especially the appointment scheduler. Patient demographic data populates almost instantly. It really makes us efficient when we are on the phone - either adding a new patient to the schedule, looking up an existing patient or checking an account balance. There is not even the slightest delay in looking up information on a patient, which means a quicker response time to our patients and better patient service. In a small office like ours, where every second counts, this level of speed and accessibility is critical."

"One of the most critical transformations sweeping healthcare is the move to more efficient management of processes and data. Enabling physicians to access Internet-based systems that are more powerful, more frequently updated, and more easily secured is critical to cutting the cost of healthcare," said Willie Tejada, Vice President, Application and Site Acceleration, Akamai Technologies. "By investing in Akamai's Web Application Accelerator, AdvancedMD is able to provide a consistent, high performance user experience to clinicians and billing service companies across the country and around the globe more cost-effectively, without investing in thousands of servers of their own."

"We are pleased with the results our customers are experiencing with this upgrade," said Sheridan Richey, Vice President of Engineering, AdvancedMD. "We continue to make significant financial investments to upgrade our architecture and infrastructure to improve the responsiveness and scalability of our application. It's a three-point effort, including the browser, transmission over the Internet and within our own data center. Traditionally, software companies thought little could be done to improve transmission speed over the Internet. We now know that is not true. While actual results are dependent on the individual network, we are seeing dramatic and consistent improvements in lower bandwidth utilization and overall round-trip response times between the customer's computer and our data center."

Keywords: Software, AdvancedMD Software Inc.

This article was prepared by Computer Weekly News editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2010, Computer Weekly News via VerticalNews.com.