Service provider supports 250 hospitals nationwide

Dortmund/Duesseldorf: The medicforma.com GmbH, which operates an electronic marketplace for medical products, and the ThyssenKrupp Health Care Services GmbH, a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp Information Services, have sealed a cooperation. The commensurate contract was signed on May 8th by the two companies.

ThyssenKrupp Health Care Services will thus offer medicforma.com`s services to its customers in the hospital area in the future. medicforma.com maintains an electronic platform with a catalogue offering over 100,000 articles needed by hospitals. It contains everything from swabs over surgical instruments up to ultramodern endoscopic equipment. Via Internet, every order placed in a ward automatically arrives at the supplier`s, a central logistics warehouse or in the in-house materials store.

Up until now, such ordering processes were associated with numerous operational steps. Now, thanks to the intelligent system from medicforma.com, a mouse click suffices and the purchase order is competed. According to medicforma.com managing director Wolfgang Swonke, to date processing a normal order cost between 65 and 130 DM. With an electronic purchase order, process costs can be reduced by over 50 percent.

As an IT service provider, ThyssenKrupp Health Care Services offers its customers individual, holistic system solutions. The company headquartered in Duesseldorf has around 250 hospitals with approximately 65,000 beds under contract. ThyssenKrupp Health Care Services develops concepts for more economy and efficiency in all areas of hospital organization for its customers

ThyssenKrupp Health Care Services managing director Dr. Wolfgang Hahn views the new cooperation as an important step in company strategy. "For us, working with medicforma.com means an important addition to our range on offer all around the e-commerce and e-procurement areas. These functions will constitute an integral part of future forward-looking hospital solutions. In tomorrow`s hospital, one will no longer be able to allow oneself the present expensive and complex procurement practices ", says Hahn.

medicforma.com managing director Wolfgang Swonke describes the signing of the contract as "a further milestone" in the still young history of the company. Only seven weeks ago, medicforma.com entered into an agreement with a hospital group. Accordingly, 32 hospitals nationwide, with ca. 16,500 beds, plan to process their purchase orders electronically over the medicforma platform in the future.

medicforma.com, in which the Bertelsmann Arvato AG has a 32 percent share, uses the leading worldwide order and marketplace system from the US firm Commerce One. The medicforma.com system consists of an electronic ordering system for hospitals (e-procurement), an electronic marketplace for sellers (e-marketplace) and an XML transaction system for the transfer of inquiries, purchase orders, bills of delivery, and in the future, also invoices and payments (e-transaction).

Contact:

ThyssenKrupp Health Care Services:
Nicole Mathes
Phone.: 0211 / 967 5282
E-mail: mathes@tkis.thyssenkrupp.com
www.tkhcs.thyssenkrupp.com

medicforma.com:
Wolfgang Hasheider
Director PR
Phone.: 05241 / 80 88 703
E-mail: Hasheider@medicforma.com
www.medicforma.com