InterSystems

InterSystems was founded in 1978 by Phillip T. (Terry) Ragon, its current CEO.[5] The firm was one of the vendors of M-technology (aka MUMPS) systems, with a product called ISM-11 (an DSM-11 clone) for the DEC PDP-11 .[6] Over the years, it acquired several other MUMPS implementations: DTM from Data Tree (1993); DSM from Digital (1995);[7] and MSM from Micronetics (1998); making InterSystems the dominant M technology vendor.

The firm eventually started combining features from these products into one they called OpenM, then consolidated the technologies into a product, Caché, in 1997.[8] At that time they stopped new development for all of their legacy M-based products (although the company still supports existing customers). They launched Ensemble, an integration platform, in 2003[9] and HealthShare, a scalable health informatics platform, in 2006.[10] In 2007, InterSystems purchased TrakHealth,[8] an Australian vendor of TrakCare, a modular healthcare information system based on InterSystems technology. In May 2011, the firm launched Globals as a free database based on the multi-dimensional array storage technology used in Caché.[11] In September 2011, InterSystems purchased Siemens Health Services (SHS) France from its parent company, Siemens.[12] In September 2017, InterSystems announced InterSystems IRIS Data Platform, which, the company said, combines database management capabilities together with interoperability and analytics, as well as technologies such as sharding for performance.[13]

The company's products include the following:

• InterSystems IRIS data platform, a hybrid multi-model database management system for real-time transactions and analytics that is available as a private or public fully managed cloud platform.[14]
• InterSystems IRIS for Health, a data platform that supports healthcare messaging protocols such as FHIR, HL7, and IHE.[15]
• HealthShare, a healthcare informatics platform that supports the creation of and secure access to unified care records.[16]
• TrakCare, a web-based healthcare information system, available outside the U.S.[17]
• InterSystems Caché, a multi-model database management systems and application server. A MUMPS Server with SQL-Overlay and featured developer tools
• InterSystems Ensemble, a rapid integration and application development platform.[18]

In 2020, InterSystems was named a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for cloud database management systems for its InterSystems IRIS technology.[14]

Epic Systems, a privately held health records vendor, is the company’s largest customer and has been using InterSystems technology for more than 40 years.[19] Epic originally built its electronic medical records software on InterSystems Caché but used InterSystems IRIS data platform as the foundation of a new release of its software launched in 2020.[19][20] As of 2022, Epic EMR software held the records of 78% of all U.S. patients and 3% of patients globally.[21]

In July 2020, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs launched a HealthShare-based platform called InterSystems Veterans Data Integration and Federation Enterprise Platform (VDIF EP) for developing longitudinal patient records.[22] VDIF EP enables care providers both within and outside the Veterans Health Administration to access veterans’ patient records.[23] The VA has used VDIF EP for tracking COVID-19 infections among veterans and VA medical personnel and for managing resource deployment across 172 VA medical centers and more than 1,000 outpatient clinics.[22][24]

Other major InterSystems customers include Credit Suisse, whose trading platform uses InterSystems Caché; the European Space Agency, which used InterSystems Caché for its Gaia mission to create a 3D map of the Milky Way; Mass General Brigham, which built its electronic health records system using InterSystems Caché and Ensemble; and the national health services of England, Scotland, and Wales, which use TrakCare for sharing patient health information and e-prescribing. 3M, BNY Mellon, Canon, Franklin Templeton, HSBC, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company, Olympus, Ricoh, SPAR, and TD Ameritrade also use InterSystems software.[25][26][27][28][29]

On August 14, 2008, the Boston Globe reported that InterSystems was filing a lawsuit against Microsoft Corporation, another tenant in its Cambridge, Mass., headquarters, seeking to prevent Microsoft from expanding in the building. InterSystems also filed a lawsuit against building owner Equity Office Partners, a subsidiary of the Blackstone Group, "contending that it conspired with Microsoft to lease space that InterSystems had rights to, and sought to drive up rents in the process".[30]

In 2010, CEO Terry Ragon led a coalition in Cambridge called Save Our Skyline to protest a city zoning change that would have allowed more signs on top of commercial buildings, partly in response to Microsoft's desire to put a sign on top of their shared building.[31]

Both disputes were eventually settled, and Microsoft and InterSystems agreed to both put low signs only in front of the building at street level.

• InterSystems website