1. “H.I.S.-tory” by
Vince Ciotti
Episode # 53:
Product
Names
Part 1
© 2011 H.I.S. Professionals, LLC

2. Recap Time
• We have now finished 52 episodes of H.I.S.-tory, which
for you math mavens out there, just about uses up the
year that Mr. HIS-talk kindly gave me to expand on my
HIMSS presentation in these weekly slide shows.
• So in these final few episodes, we’re going to recap
some themes that cross over all 4 epochs (main,
shared, mini & micro), starting this week with:
• The many names vendors gave their HIS products:
– What vendor had (and still has) the best product
names, and the few times even they screwed up!
– What vendor had the worst names in HIS-tory
– What a name can (not) tell you about a product
– Some amazing product re-naming “games”

3. The Best Product Names
• Hands-down, my alma mater, Shared Medical Systems (SMS),
had (and sold to Siemens) the best product names in HIS :
– Hot, positive, up-beat, ear-catching, techie, punny…
• Starting back in the 70s when they relied on VP of Marketing John
Marshall for names, whose product managers came up with:
• What else do you call a single data base
system, released in an era of VSAM files?
• When UniFile didn’t respond too well
(imagine system response times on 1200
baud lines!), it was re-morphed into:
• Focus – with more canned reports and less
“indexed” fields clients could sort on, then
• Command – what a powerful, take-charge
ADT/Census system that must have been!

4. More SMS Winning Names
• And who can forget “ACTIon” – SMS’ name for HBO’s “MedPro”
– Now honestly, which name turns on your buying juices more?
• And in the 80’s, SMS really hit high gear, with hot product names
that amazingly defied the reality of the product they represented:
– UNITY – now that’s a name for a product that is the synthesis
of two disparate platforms: a DEC mini-based front end for
clinicals, front-ending a shared IBM mainframe for financials!
– EXACT – the name for a re-packaging of SMS’s convoluted
pricing formula that competitors knocked for “nickel-diming”
clients with optional units and per-page report pricing…
– INDEPENDENCE – hot new name for re-
packaging of the same basic software it had
been selling for years, but offered now on
either an inhouse or shared basis. Appropriate
name for a company from Philly, home of:

5. Some Not-So-Hot SMS Names
• But even the marketing mavens in King of Prussia were not
immune to an occasional slip-of-the-tongue, to whit:
– In the mid-80s, SMS responded to the growing turnkey-mini
explosion by acquiring a red-hot San Fran-based firm: Computer
Synergy – not a bad name in its own right, agreed?
– However, SMS had been building it’s own ACTIon mini-system,
and it first combined the two to create a poor product & name:
- The Spirit Choice – not sure who dreamed that
one up, but it was a bad a name as the mixed
product was an HIS! Typically, SMS listened to the
market and cleaned up both the name/system:
- Allegra – a much better, simpler name, and a
better simpler system that sold well for over a
decade until sunset just before Y2K.

6. An SMS “Classic”
• As it winds down its life (now that Soarian is finally programmed
in something more than PowerPoint), we just must pay tribute to
one of the best product names in H.I.S.-tory, also from SMS:
– Invision! Launched in 1989, Invision clinicals were as
enormous an advance technically, as the name was leading
edge from a marketing and psychological perspective:
• Invading the market,
• A vision into clinical data,
• New, unheard of before,
• A radical & exciting concept…
• How angry those Malvern-ians must
have been when a common household
product manufacturer stole most of its
letters for their eponymous product:

7. Worst HIS Product Names!?
• So who won the other prize for the worst HIS
product names? My other alma mater: McAuto.
• I guess the airplane parent gave them the
predilection for acronyms, but look at this array:
• HFC = Hospital Financial Control
• HDC = Hospital Data Collection
• HPC = Hospital Patient Care (shared)
• PCS = Patient Care System (Tandem)
• MHS = Mini-Based Hospital System
• MRII = Medical Records (2nd version)
• When the mini revolution hit, Mac acquired & renamed several:
– LabCom (Dr. Hick’s excellent, high-end LIS system)
– RadCom& PharmCom – can’t remember where McAuto
bought these two systems, but the “Com” suffix sure was

8. Stay Tuned…
• Next week we’ll cover some more great/
horrid product names and some weird
twists in how we talk about our HIS-es:
– Does size (in a name) really matter?
– What’s the longest name in HIS-tory?
– Modern/weird app/module names.
– The “re-name” game (if you can’t
afford to re-write it – re-name it!)
• So what’s your most & least favorite HIS
product names? Send me yours and I’ll
blame you: vciotti@hispros.com