Novell and PricewaterhouseCoopers Deliver Integrated Solution for the Healthcare Market

Novell, Inc., the leading provider of Net services software, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world's largest professional services firm, today announced an alliance to provide strategic planning, development and deployment of integrated business solutions for the more than $1 trillion U.S. healthcare industry.

5 February 2001

  • Alliance will provide expertise and infrastructure solutions to give customers competitive advantage in the more than $1 trillion healthcare industry
  • Enables healthcare organizations to meet challenges of responding to new industry regulations, changing relationships with managed care providers and consumers, and Internet integration

Novell, Inc., the leading provider of Net services software, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world's largest professional services firm, today announced an alliance to provide strategic planning, development and deployment of integrated business solutions for the more than $1 trillion U.S. healthcare industry. The companies will combine the extensive healthcare and risk management expertise of PricewaterhouseCoopers with the technology infrastructure provided by Novell's Net services software to help healthcare providers move from the traditional ways of doing business to address major challenges in the healthcare market today. These challenges include responding to new industry regulations like HIPAA, changing relationships with managed care providers and consumers, upgrading infrastructure, and Internet integration.

The rise of the Internet and significant regulatory changes in the United States present major new challenges and opportunities for the U.S. healthcare sector. Competitive pressures and the privacy requirements of the HIPAA legislation are driving healthcare providers to find more effective ways to share patient information while protecting confidentiality. The alliance between Novell and PricewaterhouseCoopers will provide customers a complete healthcare solution designed to help companies make this move, while saving money at the same time. HIPAA alone, according to the American Hospital Association, could cost the U.S. healthcare industry as much as $22.5 billion over the next five years, so effective measures to respond to HIPAA regulations will be an important competitive benefit for healthcare firms.

According to Andrew Ward, PricewaterhouseCoopers partner-in-charge of the healthcare consulting practice, HIPAA regulations present opportunities to improve processes and reduce overall costs. "HIPAA clearly creates an opportunity in the healthcare industry to reduce administrative complexity and costs," Ward said. "It also will assist in bolstering the confidence of consumers around maintaining privacy and security of their health information. We believe the combination of capabilities brought by Novell and PricewaterhouseCoopers brings great value to the healthcare industry as they transition away from traditional business processes."

"Novell's relationship with PricewaterhouseCoopers is not only a validation of Novell's Net services software strategy, but it's also an ideal complement to our new Novell Healthcare consulting practice," said Alex Salehi, vice president of Novell Professional Services. "First, PricewaterhouseCoopers will draw upon their broad understanding of the current challenges in the healthcare market to assess and define a customer's business objectives. Then Novell Consulting, applying the proven products and education that define the Novell Healthcare practice, will outline the technology infrastructure needed to meet those business objectives. Ultimately, we want to provide organizations with a single, unified network - one Net - that will allow healthcare companies to tackle the new challenges facing them today, including reducing costs, detecting fraud and reducing errors."

Together, Novell and PricewaterhouseCoopers can provide healthcare customers with:

  • Strategic and Tactical Assessments and Analyses - Strategic opportunity and operational improvement assessments; alignment of initiatives with organizational goals and objectives; privacy, security and information technology assessments; project definition and prioritization; and design and implementation of a program governance and management infrastructure
  • Solution Design and Development - Business case analysis; define project structures and resources; design/redesign IT architecture; develop workflow efficiency revisions; and build policies and procedures
  • Solution Deployment - IT architecture implementation; change integration and operational readiness; quality assurance and testing; user training programs; and certifications
  • Operational Support - Performance, controls and compliance reviews

Availability and Pricing
Novell and PricewaterhouseCoopers integrated solution for the healthcare market is available to customers today. For more information, contact Novell Consulting at www.novell.com/consulting or PricewaterhouseCoopers at 800-211-5131.

About PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers is the world's largest professional services organization. Drawing on the knowledge and skills of more than 150,000 people in 150 countries, the organization helps clients solve complex business problems and measurably enhance their ability to build value, manage risk and improve performance in an Internet-enabled world. PricewaterhouseCoopers refers to the member firms of the worldwide PricewaterhouseCoopers organization.

About Novell
Novell, Inc. (NASDAQ:NOVL), is the leading provider of Net services software that delivers services to secure and power all types of networks the Internet, intranets, and extranets; wired to wireless; corporate and public across leading operating systems. Novell's Net services software provides the foundation for one Net a single global network that supports new applications and forms of business. Worldwide channel, consulting, education and technical support programs, along with strategic alliances, combine Novell Net services software with third-party products and services to form complete Net solutions.

For information on Novell's complete range of products and services, contact Novell's Customer Response Center at (888) 321-4CRC (4272), or visit Novell's Web site at http://www.novell.com. Press may access Novell announcements and company information on the World Wide Web at http://www.novell.com/pressroom. In addition, detailed comparisons between Novell products and competitive offerings from other vendors are available on the Web at http://www.novell.com/competitive.

Novell is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Certain versions of content ("Material") accessible here may contain branding from Hewlett-Packard Company (now HP Inc.) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company. As of September 1, 2017, the Material is now offered by Micro Focus, a separately owned and operated company. Any reference to the HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise/HPE marks is historical in nature, and the HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise/HPE marks are the property of their respective owners.