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Hot Off the Wire – Dell, AMA partner on e-medical offering; IBM wraps up Initiate deal; PlayStation net fights a bug; AOL sells affiliate marketing group

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A roundup of the latest high-tech news from The Associated Press:

• Dell teams up with AMA for e-medical records offering

SEATTLE — Dell Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL) hopes to expand a key part of its business through a deal to sell computer hardware and technology consulting to medical practices that want to use new electronic medical records and related services from the American Medical Association.

Dell's announcement was timed for Monday's start of the annual health care technology conference hosted by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.

Hospitals and medical practices have been customers for Dell's computers, servers and data storage devices. But the PC maker increased its stake in the ongoing shift from paper to digital medical records when it spent $3.9 billion for Perot Systems Inc., a technology services company. About half of Perot's consulting business came from hospitals and other health care providers.

So far, the transition toward medical records has been slow, particularly among smaller medical practices because the upfront costs are high. But the business opportunity in health care technology widened after the passage of the stimulus bill, which set aside billions of dollars for hospitals and health care providers to adopt electronic medical records.

Dell said that under the deal it will provide technology consulting, computer hardware and follow-up support for doctors who decide to use new software from the American Medical Association. The system is aimed at doctors who aren't closely affiliated with a larger hospital, and it includes Web-based tools for writing electronic prescriptions, ordering and viewing lab results and storing patient medical records.

Dell and the AMA said the system is being tested in Michigan and will roll out nationally later this year.

• IBM finishes acquisition of Initiate Systems

ARMONK, N.Y. – IBM (NYSE: IBM) said Monday it has closed its acquisition of privately held Initiate Systems.

No financial terms were disclosed.

Chicago-based Initiate makes software for sharing data in many industries but particularly between health care and government organizations.

IBM has said the deal will allow it to offer a cheaper and more efficient way to share medical histories and other data across organizations.

• PlayStation 3 Network has a bug

NEW YORK — Sony says it has found a bug that has knocked some PlayStation 3 users off the game console's online network.

Sony says the problem was likely caused by a bug in the clock functionality incorporated in the system. It's affecting older PlayStation 3 models, not the newest slim version.

Sony would not say how many users were affected by the problem, which comes just as PlayStation 3 sales are picking up.

Errors that PS3 users started seeing Sunday include the date of the systems being reset to Jan. 1, 2000. The problem was reminiscent of the Y2K bug a decade ago.

Sony said in a blog post Monday it hopes to resolve the problem within 24 hours.

• AOL sells affiliate marketing business

SAN FRANCISCO — AOL Inc. has sold its affiliate marketing business, Buy.at, for an undisclosed price to Digital Window Ltd., which runs a network of affiliate marketing sites. Such sites steer customers to e-commerce sites in exchange for a cut of sales.

Digital Window, which is based in London, said Monday that it acquired Perfiliate Ltd., which runs Buy.at. Perfiliate is based in Newcastle, England.

AOL, which separated from Time Warner Inc. late last year, bought Buy.at in 2008 for an undisclosed amount.

AOL, a pioneer in the dial-up Internet business during the '90s, has been trying to streamline and concentrate on building itself up as a content and advertising business. It runs dozens of Web sites, including popular tech blog Engadget and personal finance site WalletPop.
 

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