Florian Weiland founded Sphere Healthcare Information Systems in 1972 in Canada, originally focusing on hospital financial systems. Sphere grew over decades, transitioning technology from mini computers to UNIX and Windows. Weiland changed the company name multiple times before settling on Sphere. In need of a clinical partner and capital, Weiland agreed for Sphere to be acquired by NextGen in 2009. NextGen was looking to expand from ambulatory to hospital markets. The acquisition brought together Sphere's financials and NextGen's future clinical partner Opus to form NextGen's hospital information system.

1. H.I.S.-toryby Vince Ciotti
Episode #80: NextGenPart 2
© 2012 by H.I.S. Professionals, LLC, all rights reserved.
QSI’s “Sphere” of Influence

2. FlorianWeiland’s HIS-tory
• We learned in the first episode on NextGen how their QSI parent
went way back to 1973 and Shelly Raizin’s dentistry system.
• This week’s episode covers NextGen’s hospital financial system,
Sphere, acquired in 2009, but whose roots go way back to 1972!
• Sphere’s founder, FlorianWeiland,
emigrated from Switzerland to Canada,
along with his Engineering degree.
• He moved to Toronto, which might have
seemed warm to a Swiss native…
• Florian had studied COBOL in college, and
found a job programming a hospital
Payroll system for an MAI Basic Four mini.
• It took the mini 4 hours to process 600
FTEs, slow by today’s nano-standards, but
far faster than the 4 days it took by hand!

3. A Monster Mini
• Florian still remembers how this screaming
mini really rocked the DP world then with:
– 8 thousand bytes of core memory, and
– 1.1 megabyte floppy disks for storage!
• His first US hospital client was in Spokane,
Washington in the early 80s, and they were
running SMS’ SHAS shared financial system.
• Next came Fountain Valley Hospital in CA
that was running the early “Rubicon” LIS
(some day, we’ll have to cover these
early ancillary systems in Lab & RX too),
and wanted to expand and modernize it.
• Florian shifted his focus from financials
to clinicals in one CPU cycle, and by 1981
had completed coding an entire new LIS!

4. Amazing Bargain…
• It’s tough remembering 40 years back, but Florian
thinks the total bill for writing the LIS was ≈$180K!
• He met his next client on a flight from Toronto to a retreat in
Montreal: the CEO of Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane.
• Over dinner, Florian described a 600-
bed Canadian client he was working
for, the CEO joined Flori to visit them
the next day, and was so impressed, he
hired Florian to write software for his
MAI Basic Four mini in 1983.
• With all this business in hand, Florian
started his own company in 1984 in
warmy, sunny Orange County, CA,
appropriately named:
- American Financial Systems

5. The Name Game
• The nameAFS didn’t jive much with
Healthcare, his prime market, so Florian
switched it in 1986 to “Integrated
Hospital Solutions,” or I.H.S. for short.
• Sound familiar? Regular readers of this
HIS-tory might remember that name
from episode 58 on Dairyland (you can
catch them all at www.hispros.com).
• Turns out to be the name of an IBM SYS 38-based HIS vendor in
nearby La Jolla, CA., who took exception to use of their name, so
Florian went back to the naming drawing board an this time came
up with Tri-Cord Healthcare Information Systems. The name Tri-
Cord lasted into the 90s, before Florian made his last name change
• Like all the name changes, TriCordnext “RISC-ed” the switch to
UNIX offering systems on DG AViiONs, HP9000s and IBM RS/6000s.

6. TriCord
• TriCord grew
well, reaching
80+ clients and
per this old LIS
survey:
• Files were in
ISAM at first,
then switched
to MS’ SQL.
• In the 90s,
TriCord made
the switch to
Windows PCs,
using a Providex
translator.

7. What Goes Up…
• TriCord did well, but Florian chose some poor
capital partners who both bled the firm dry.
• Undaunted, Florian started over again, this
time under the name Sphere Healthcare
Information Systems, which name stuck.
• Sphere grew steadily, gradually
offering a complete set of
hospital financials:both Patient
Accounting (“RCM” for moderns)
and general accounting (“ERP”).
• If your hospital is in a search for a
financial system, invite Florian in
for a demo – anything he doesn’t
have in his system, he’ll program
for you while he’s there!

8. Search for a Clinical partner
• Although he added a basic Order Entry
system, Florian knew he needed a solid
capital partneronce more, as well as a
robust clinical partner to offer a full E.H.R.
• He first started talking with Opus, a small start-up TX firm with a
red hot E.H.R. that we’ll cover in depth in next week’s episode.
• He also spoke with a VP named Rossiter at NextGen, the giant in
the ambulatory market eager to get into the hospital market next.
• Ironically, just as Florian was
consummating his deal with
NextGen to give Sphere a solid
capital partner, he introduced
them to Opus, his potential
clinical partner and the rest, as
they say, is HIS-tory!

9. Next Week…
• So that’s how NextGen’s
financial system evolved
over four decades, like QSI.
• Many thanks to
FlorianWeiland for this
fascinating story, and digging
up these old files while he’s
on vacation in the Caymans!
• Next week we’ll cover the
story of Tim Rhoads &Fred
Beck’sOpus, their hospital
EMR, and then finally Rick
Opry’sIntraNexus, the final
leg in NextGen’s HIS stool.