Microsoft is planning to initiate a new program to push its software into the health-care industry, the company announced at the World Health Care Congress, which begins Monday in Washington, D.C.Microsoft also said 22 other software vendors and health-care companies are backing Knowledge Driven Health Plans, an initiative that it says aims to improve good service and decrease costs.The only goal, Microsoft said, is to keep allowing different health-care organizations to exchange information across disparate of IT systems. The move is not unlike efforts in many other industries that seek IT systems to more easily share information

The plan is to be focused on Microsoft products and technologies such as .Net 2.0, BizTalk Server, the Windows Server System, SQL Server and Microsoft Office 2007.The company also emphasized on using standards such as XML for applications to securely exchange information over the Internet.The 22 partners include Hewlett-Packard, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Technologies.