SAP Teams With Solution Provider For Health-Care Market Expansion

The move, the first of several such partnerships SAP has in the works, marks a renewed push by the Waldorf, Germany-based application developer into the U.S. health-care market.

LSI, founded by a pair of IT administrators who ran an SAP system at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, develops and implements solutions for the education and public sector markets based on the SAP Business Suite of ERP applications. LSI’s new health-care software, also based on SAP’s ERP suite and the vendor’s Best Practices package, marks the solution provider’s expansion into the SME (small and midsize enterprise) hospital space.

LSI’s healthcare software specifically uses SAP’s financial and logistics management applications to provide small and midsize hospitals -- those with $500 million or less in annual revenue and fewer than 400 beds -- and medical centers with an integrated financial, inventory and materials management and analysis system.

Such integration, for example, will help hospitals link their operating room scheduling applications with applications used to order medical supplies, said Bruce Bellemore, LSI’s national vice president and managing director, in an interview. “I’ve been talking to a number of prospects and what they complain about most is the lack of end-to-end business integration,” he said.

The integration also provides the ability to develop an audit trail of application activity. “That really doesn’t exist right now,” Bellemore said.

Along with developing the integration between the operational applications, LSI worked with SAP to develop best-practice configuration templates for its solution based on SAP’s Best Practices toolset. “This really facilitates that decision-making process,” Bellemore said.

LSI will be offering its health-care management software in on-premise and on-demand versions.

SAP has some 2,500 health-care customers worldwide, but the alliance with LSI marks a renewed focus on the U.S. healthcare market by SAP, said John Papandrea, senior vice president of SAP’s healthcare industry business unit. “The relationship with LSI is an important one,” he said in an interview. The executive said other health-care industry related announcements, covering both partner and direct sales, are due from SAP by the end of the year.