Horizon CMS Released While many of the Content Enabled Vertical Applications (CEVAs) on the market today have been focused on the Enterprise CMS platform, McKesson -- a provider of healthcare software -- has released a series of content management integrations to their existing applications. To do this, McKesson has built its own Enterprise CMS platform to bring library services to the healthcare market.

Horizon Enterprise CMS Features

Horizon Enterprise CMS supports images, report output, and electronic documents. Users are able to index and search on all content and route them through normal business processes within accounts payable, materials management and human resources application for healthcare providers. Horizon ECM looks to solve the problem by first focusing on the vast amounts of paper documents throughout a healthcare provider. This focus on imaging physical documents builds on McKesson’s experience with patient folders which has streamlined the flow of information in hospitals and clinics. The platform now also supports electronic business documents, such as W-2 forms, applications, contracts and invoices. Before Horizon ECM, all of this content was managed in physical formats. Or, if managed electronically, it was spread out on various servers throughout the hospital. Now, all of this information is managed in one central location and as digital docs.

The Case for CMS ROI

By moving to electronic document management, health care providers are able to reduce the costs of processing transactions thus allowing them to process additional transactions. For example, an accounts receivable department is able to review discrepancies in smaller invoices, due to enhancements brought by enterprise search, resulting in a larger overall collection. Without EDMS, invoices under US$ 30.00 would often go uncollected. Now they go through the same collection process.

Customizable and Integratable

Horizon Enterprise Content Manager is currently integrated with McKesson's Pathway Financial Management, Pathways Materials Management and Horizon Human Resources Management applications. It also allows for custom applications to be developed on the platform. McKesson shows us that CEVA will not only emerge from the Enterprise Content Management space but from vertical application providers as well. You can also be sure that McKesson will not be the only vendor to add ECM to their platforms.