In October, Eclipsys shares fell nearly 40% because of ‘response time issues’ with its new SunriseXA software products that help doctors to process data electronically. Software problems are beginning to impede stock valuations and harming brand reputations and it seems healthcare has been badly affected this year. Misys had problems earlier on in the year. It has emerged that in Eclipsys’s case the new application suite was not powerful enough to meet their customers’ requirements. This badly affected its new sales momentum and Eclipsys has reported a quarterly loss of $11.1 million.

Eclipsys had announced that it was working closely with iSoft for future products. Both companies want to exploit new web developments and have announced future collaboration based on Microsoft.Net architecture. It was thought that this might be the source of some of the problems. However, Commenting on their relationship with iSOFT over the ‘response time issue’, Eclipsys issued a statement stating that there was no linkage between the iSOFT product line and the response time issues. The response time issues were identified in the Sunrise XA workflow engine and at no time has iSOFT’s software relied upon any SunriseXA based technology.

Recently, Eclipsys has announced that it has resolved its ‘response time issue’ and has achieved significantly improved performance results. Using actual patient transactions, the company claims the upcoming version of SunriseXA achieved a greater than 30-percent performance gain, sub-second response time for tasks other than orders and a consistent sub-second response time for simple orders, and sub two-second response time for complex orders or multiple order sets. Eclipsys have also rescheduled its SunriseXA delivery schedule. TekPlus hope that healthcare-IT software companies learn from these situations and not rush out with applications without proper tests but also respond better to any problems highlighted thereafter.

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