Whitepaper Business Intelligence in Health

8/7/2019 Whitepaper Business Intelligence in Health

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BusinessWeek Research Services

Business Intelligenceor Healthcare:The New Prescription or

Boosting Cost Management,Productivity and Medical Outcomes

An exclusive report rom BusinessWeek Research Services

February 2009


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February 2009 2 BusinessWeek Research Services

Copyright and Disclaimer Notices

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February 20093BusinessWeek Research Services

Table of Contents

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Service-Line Focus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Sealing the Cracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Buy-In rom the Top . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Show Them the Iceberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Conclusions and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Sponsors Statement: Microsot BI Leverages Healthcare Data into Better Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10


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Executive Summary

b Healthcare organizations are swimming in an ever-deeper pool o data. But without a program in place totarget, gather, deliver and analyze the most relevant data, these organizations will continue to be data rich but

inormation poor.b Forward-thinking healthcare organizations realize that dataand, thus, business intelligence (BI)is at the

center o inormed and precise decision-making that will improve patient and service outcomes in addition toensuring their organizations uture.

b To achieve the ull benets o BI, organizations must take an enterprisewide, strategic approach vs. tacklingsmall tactical projects, and realize that the greatest eciencies come rom integrating data historically siloedin nancial, operational and clinical systems.

b A strategic ocus is the dierence between simply recognizing the value o managing key inormation oranalytical purposes and transorming the culture to prize evidence-based decision-making at all levels.

b Cost savings are the main driver or implementing BI in healthcare organizations, ollowed by the need toimprove medical outcomes.

b A strategic approach to BI, which cuts across the organization, requires buy-in rom not only top executives butalso physicians and clinical sta.

Methodology

BusinessWeek Research Services (BWRS) launched a research program in late 2008 to determine the views osenior executives at large healthcare organizations on the benets o creating a common business intelligenceplatorm or analyzing clinical, operational and nancial data. The hypothesis was that healthcare providers arerealizing higher levels o decision-making eectiveness in terms o patient care, cost containment, organizationalperormance and customer satisaction by integrating previously disparate data and providing users with anintegrated, accurate, real-time view o inormation. Three key ocus areas were covered in the research: clinicalperormance (including acute healthcare and wellness programs); nancial perormance (including service-lineanalysis); and overall operational perormance (including asset management and customer satisaction).

This report is based on contacting senior executives, consultants and industry analysts considered to be thoughtleaders in healthcare BI, particularly those who can point to the best implementation strategies that come romwell-planned BI initiatives rather than tactical or departmental solutions.

The healthcare organizations included in the research or this report are:

b Denver Health and Hospital Authority b Lincolnshire Partnership Foundation Trust

b Hartord Hospital b Nemours

b Hospital or Sick Children in Toronto b University Health Network

The ollowing consulting and analyst rms were also contacted:

b Aberdeen Group b McKinsey/London School o Economics and Political Science

b Health Industry Insights, a branch o IDC b Palladium Group

Triangle Publishing Services Co. Inc. supported BWRS in the in-depth telephone interviews and in the writing,editing and production o this report. BWRS and the author o this report, Joe Mullich, are grateul to all o theexecutives who provided their time and insights or this project.

This research project was unded by a grant rom Microsot but was written independently o this sponsor. Theeditorial department o BusinessWeek Magazine was not involved in this project.

For more inormation about this project, please contact the Director o Custom and Syndicated Research atBusinessWeek at [email protected].
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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Introduction

Faced with a heightened ocus on consumer-directed healthcare, cost containment, compliance and increasinglycomplex processes, healthcare providers are starting to embrace the idea o using inormation to their advantage.While the healthcare industry has historically been slow to turn to business intelligence (BI) tools, leadingpractitioners now realize data is at the center o inormed and precise decision-making that can ensure theirorganizations uture (see gure 1, The Drivers o Healthcare BI).

By integrating data previously dispersed in clinical, nancial and operational systems, healthcare practitionersare providing users with more accurate insights into key areas such as service-line spending, quality o care andorganizational perormance. This data integration improves cost eciencies, medical decisions and the alignmento activities rom the boardroom to the back oce and rom the emergency room to the supply room.

Although healthcare still lags behind other industries in adopting BI, leading practitioners are seeing large gainsrom taking a more enterprisewide, platorm-based approach to BI rather than ocusing on point or departmentalsolutions. This platorm approach to healthcare BI represents a shit rom tactical thinking to strategic thinking.

The results are evident:bCost savings. Healthcare organizations are using BI

to eliminate waste and mine data stores to examineand recoup denied claims.

bImproved margins. Since implementing a BI/balanced scorecard program, Nemoursone othe largest pediatric health systems in the UnitedStateshas improved its gross margins by roughly 2percentage points each year.

bImproved patient satisaction. A new study romAberdeen Group ound that best-in-class healthcareorganizations achieved a 15 percent increase in patientsatisaction scores by using BI and analytic tools.

bBetter care. Denver Health and Hospital Authority isleveraging BI tools to improve patient outcomes usingpoint-o-care inormation to identiy high-risk and non-compliant patients.

Service-Line Focus

Because o the need or better cost-visibility, a commonstarting point or implementing strategic BI is service-line analysis. Even though healthcare organizations typically manage resources, sta and billing through servicelinessuch as emergency medicine, intensive care and cardiac surgerymost providers have been unable to geta clear view o whether their service lines are ecient or protable.

There is the growing realization that many organizations are losing money when it comes to managing patientinormation and operational fow, says David Hatch, vice president and principal analyst or the businessintelligence practice at Aberdeen Group. This realization is causing a rapid increase in interest in BI (see gure 2,BI Spending Tops Healthcare Agenda).

Case in point: Lincolnshire Partnership Foundation Trust. The mental health trust in the United Kingdom plungedinto BI because o a specic need to better analyze the eciency o its service lines. As part o the process o

Figure 1

The Drivers o Healthcare BIHealthcare organizations say cost savings are the main motivations or

them to ocus on BI, almost double the importance o the next leading actor

(percentage o respondents).

Base: 95 healthcare providersSource: Aberdeen Group, 2008 survey

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Need to manage rising costs: 80%

Need to improve medical outcomes: 46%

Need to improvepatient satisaction: 30%

Need to adhere to regulatorycompliance (i.e., HIPAA, JCAHO): 20%

Need to attract andmaintain medical sta: 10%


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applying or oundation status (since granted), Lincolnshire managers wererequired to demonstrate that they could manage nancial and other orms orisk through access to complete, timely and accurate inormation.

To do this, Lincolnshire extracted data rom a number o disparate systems,

such as its patient administration system, HR, nance and clinical systems,and loaded it in a data warehouse. Then a ront-end reporting and analyticsinterace enabled service-line managers to analyze the data. Now service-linemanagers can see issues earlier and act quickly, says Steve Lidbetter, deputydirector o perormance and inormation or Lincolnshire Partnership.

The launching point was to ensure that patients or various service lines, suchas adult, childrens and learning disabilities, were seen in a timely manner.Now, managers are notied i a patient who should be seen in two weekshasnt been scheduled ater week one, allowing them to take action. Thetrigger allows managers to act, Lidbetter says. I there is an exception, nowthey know why.

Ater this successul oray, Lincolnshire is expanding the BI system to ront-line sta and drilling down deeper into the data to improve operations. Weve already proven out the concept thatwell be able to compare dierent medical teams that are providing the same service, drilling down to individualsta members and individual patients, Lidbetter says. I a certain condition is typically handled by 10 contactswith a patient, well be able to identiy those patients who were treated with less than 10 contacts and see whatthe outcomes were.

The ramications o such evidence-based practices are ar-ranging. Lincolnshire, or example, plans to combineclinical data with mapping sotware to determine the ideal personnel and routes or house calls, thereby maximizingits resources. Even i healthcare organizations start BI with small, tactical projectsas Lincolnshire didthey wantto be able to grow these eorts into a more all-encompassing solution. These adopters have realized that, ultimately,the greatest eciencies come rom sharing data across nancial, operational and clinical departments.

Sealing the Cracks

A strategic approach to BI identies and plugs gaps that appear within the chain o activities and can lead toinecient or substandard care. For example, Denver Health and Hospital Authority, Colorados primary saetynet, provides 40 percent o the care administered to people in the metropolitan area who lack health insurance.Because o this responsibility, Denver Health CIO Gregory Veltri says BI is especially crucial to avoid both wasteand having patients all between the cracks.

Several years ago, Denver Health began integrating clinical datalab, radiology and pharmacy inormationintothe data warehouse that already contained nancial data. One o the rst projects was to create a registry to trackpatients with chronic diseases such as hypertension and colon cancer.

We can now [sort] patients by clinic and provider, and send the inormation about a patient to the appropriatedoctor, Veltri says. This is done in an easy-to-understand graphical manner. Providers usually have that kind oinormation, but they may not have time to nd it or know exactly how to get to it.

By coordinating patient inormation stored in various clinical systems, a doctor might immediately learn that a patient isallergic to a certain kind o medication. In the past, the patients allergy might have been overlooked until the medicationorder reached the pharmacy, thereby wasting time and eort because the order would need to be revised.

Figure 2

BI Spending Tops Healthcare AgendaHealth Industry Insights, a branch o consulting

rm IDC, predicted BI spending would be a top IT

investment or healthcare organizations in 2008.

When it reviewed these predictions in 2009, our

received an A grade or accuracy:

nBusiness intelligence and related information

management are leading categories of technology

spending increases across all segments.

nElectronic medical records spending has

increased by more than 10 percent.

nRevenue cycle management upgrades.

nPatient saety improvements drive investments.

Source: Health Industry Insights, 2009


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It can be dicult to quantiy the value o those types o things, says Veltri. However, it makes sense that i youcan provide better care, and keep patients rom being harmed, their stays will be shorter and they will need ewerresources. Veltri cites a study indicating that 60 percent o all healthcare costs could be attributed to waste. Ithink using business intelligence to provide understandable inormation at the point o care allows providers tomake inormed decisions, eliminating waste and improving saety and quality, he says.

Denver Health has also used BI to build prototype management dashboards that manage business processes andmonitor nancial and clinical indicators. Monitoring high-risk patients diabetes indicators allows physicians toensure that the highest risk patients keep the disease under control. Furthermore, by using these tools, the healthorganization can monitor process changes that reduce medication turnaround times (the time rom medicationordering to availability on the patient foor) rom 84 minutes to about seven minutes. Thats a huge dierencewhen youre talking about things like pain medication and antibiotics, Veltri notes.

Buy-In from the Top

A strategic approach to BI, which cuts across the organization, requires buy-inrom not only top executives but also physicians and clinical sta (see gure 3,Getting Doctors Involved Pays O). Currently, many managers believe andact with the attitude that i the data stays compartmentalized, they maintainpower, says Dr. David B. Friend, a ormer hospital administrator and currentlythe CEO at perormance management consultancy Palladium Group. To thwartthis, you need not only agreement on the part o management but commitment.You need to align every part o the organization, so everyone knows their piecein the mission.

This need or enterprisewide buy-in is doubly true, given the unique challengeso healthcare. Ive been in healthcare or 10 years, and its rapidly changing andheavily regulated, with many stakeholder groups that are dicult to reconcile,says James Gregware, director o revenue cycle and nancial systems at Hartord

Hospital, one o the largest medical centers in New England.

Perhaps because o these pressures, while healthcare organizations lag behindother industries in implementing BI, a survey by BusinessWeek Research Servicesindicates that healthcare executives are more likely than their counterpartsin other industries to see perormance managementwhich uses BI as itsplatormas an important component o meeting their strategic goals (see gure4, Healthcare High on Perormance Management).

Nemours is a prime example o using strategic BI as the underpinning o its enterprisewide perormancemanagement eorts. The 4,200-employee pediatric health systems overarching goal is one Nemours, whichwas designed to get the widespread operations to work in a coordinated eort to improve patient care.

Ater ormulating the strategy, the executive team implemented a balanced scorecard, which is a perormancemanagement tool that measures small operational activities that are aligned to enterprise vision and strategy. BIprovides the real-time data that enables managers to monitor those activities and make rapid course adjustments.

Signicantly, Nemours made headway with the program only ater top executives held a two-day retreat in whichthey candidly discussed how their own behavior didnt mesh with meeting their organizational goals. We usedto come to meetings late, with no agenda, and everyone would be on their Blackberries, says Gina Altieri, vice

Figure 3

Getting Doctors InvolvedPays OWhen physicians are involved in the

business side o the hospital, perormance

management improves dramatically.

(Clinical leadership score refects level o

clinicians involvement in business side o

hospital. Perormance management score is

based on an ascending scale o 1 to 5.)

Source: The McKinsey Quarterly, A healthierhealthcare system or the United Kingdom,June 2008

ClinicalLeadership

Score

PerormanceManagement

Score

Top Quartile 2.8

2nd Quartile 2.6

3rd Quartile 2.2

Bottom Quartile 2.1


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president o corporate services at Nemours.Ater the retreat, we started coming on time,submitted agendas, and stopped with theBlackberries.

The top-down ocus got others involved. Oneo Nemours goals was to capture body massindex (BMI) on every patient, seeing it as akey measure o well-being across the entirepediatric patient base. Though recordingBMI had long been an ocial duty o everydepartment, No one thought it was theirjob, Altieri says. Ater it became a ocus othe balanced scorecard program, the numbero patients whose BMI was captured roserom 10 percent to 60 percent.

Aberdeen Groups Hatch says that kindo ocus is the dierence between simplyrecognizing the value o managing keyinormation or analytical purposes anddeveloping an inormation culture whereeveryone has a vested interest in capturingand using the inormation.

Every month now, Nemours posts key metricsincluding actual vs. budgeted expenses, thenumber o patients likely to recommend theorganization and specic practice to a riend,and the number o employees who have

completed prescribed training programs. One o our core strategies is that we want learned, competent people,and that requires training, Altieri says.

Beore Nemours started to measure training, only about three in our people got mandatory training in a timely way.Ater, that gure rose to 99 percent. Behavior changes once people know something is being tracked, she says.

Since the business intelligence/balanced scorecard program started, Nemours has seen its gross margins improveby roughly 2 percentage points per year.

Show Them the Iceberg

Many aspects o a strategic BI program are not immediately visible and thus may not be highly valued by users

throughout the enterprise. One o these unctions is to show the amount o back-end work that is necessary. StevePevere, senior project manager at University Health Network (UHN), made up o three Canadian teaching hospitals,began carrying around a picture o an iceberg, demonstrating to department managers the preparatory work that wasnecessary to reconcile disparate systems and build data warehouses. It was Peveres way o reminding the managersthat they only saw the tip o the iceberg, but not the massive bulk underneath their radar.You have to manage their expectations, Pevere says. Part o managing those expectations was having a steeringcommittee o strong advocates who could communicate the work going on behind the scenes.

Figure 4

Healthcare High on Perormance ManagementHealthcare executives are more likely to see perormance management as a key to

meeting their strategic goals than their counterparts in other industries. (C-levelexecutives rating o the importance o perormance management on an ascending scale o

1 to 7; mean scores.)

Source: BusinessWeek Research Services and SAS Institute survey o more than 300 executives o

organizations with at least $500 million in annual revenues, 2007

nTotal Results nHealthcare Professionals

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Innovation practices(e.g., new products,services, processes)

Perormancemanagement

Organizationalefectiveness(e.g., process

improvement such as Leanmanagement, Six Sigma)

Customerloyalty/retention

Becoming moreagile/responsive to

opportunities and threats

5.65

5.63

5.58

5.83

5.59

5.72

6.13

5.61

5.8

6.28


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February 20099Businessweek Research Services

When the system rolled out, UHN was careul to choose a motivated department whose BI eort would dovetailwith a key organizational goalpromoting sel-service. The project aggregated a number o HR reports, such assick time and benets, and allowed department managers to pull the inormation they needed themselves. Endusers were delighted that the sel-serve reports provided timelier access and allowed them to easily drill downto the inormation they needed. HR was happy to eliminate the cost o producing the paper reports and elding

many phone calls.

When successes like this occur, organizations must be prepared or rapid expansion o their BI eorts. For instance,the Hospital or Sick Children in Toronto started with three metrics that eventually expanded to 40 as the initiativespread across the Ontario-based organization. Access to BI was rst granted to 25 executives and then expandedto 75 directors a year later. Now, 6,000 employees have access.

This is getting toward the goal o case costing, says Je A. Mainland, vice president, corporate strategy andperormance at the hospital. With the BI tools, well be able to determine the resources that should be allotted toa tonsillectomy, like X-rays and post-surgical care, and plan appropriately.

Since implementing the BI program, the hospital has seen an 8 percent to 75 percent improvement in each o itsmeasured metrics, such as controlling the rate o inections. People are inspired to do better when they see thedata, he says.

Conclusions and Recommendations

With the increasing amounts o data that healthcare organizations collect, BI solutions are a natural answer to thechallenge o improving patient satisaction and medical outcomes while reducing costs and meeting ever-more-stringent regulatory standards. Though lagging behind other industries in adoption, healthcare organizations arehighly interested in improving perormance managementwhich BI enablesand, as such, they are beginning toembrace BI programs that provide better visibility across clinical, nancial and operational systems.

Spreading this technology successully throughout the organization depends on adopting the ollowing best-

practice techniques and philosophies:b Create a culture o accountability as part o the deployment o dashboards and balanced scorecards.

b Go beyond top-management agreement to top-management commitment.

b Prepare stakeholders or the act that a long period o data preparation and cleansing may be necessary beoreapplications can roll out, but assure them that that will position the organization or even greater gains in theuture.

b Improve capabilities to track patients and assets.

b Incorporate inormation rom not only business systems but also diverse clinical systems.

b Involve physicians and other key stakeholders in the planning process, conduct training sessions on the toolsspecically designed or them and be prepared to prove the clinical benets o BI.

b Team IT with a highly motivated stakeholder to create an immediate win that will generate enthusiasm throughoutthe organization or evidence-based decision-making. n


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BusinessWeek Research Services10February 2009

The vast majority o healthcare organizations are data rich

and inormation poor. But according to a research study by

BusinessWeek Research Services, some orward-thinking

organizations are now able to peer into their rich data stores

to make business decisions based on realities they never

knew existed. These organizations are using the principles

and technologies o enterprisewide business intelligence(BI), which is the key to creating better nancial and patient

outcomes, according to Paul Smolke, senior director o industry

solutions or the healthcare sector at Microsot Corp., and

Guy Weismantel, the companys director o marketing. We

spoke with Smolke and Weismantel to discuss how Microsots

approach to BI can benet healthcare organizations.

Healthcare costs are rising aster than revenues. How

can a BI initiative help healthcare organizations improve

eciencies and better control overall costs?

Smolke: By combining operational, clinical and nancial

data, healthcare organizations can analyze trends in areasthey couldnt have in the past, which improves operational

eciencies and nancial perormance. An example is

Wandsworth Primary Care Trust in London, which used BI to

gain a more accurate view o its perormance in administering

child vaccinations. The BI system speeds data aggregation

between general practitioners and district nurses, and it

presents the data as a series o easily accessed scorecards

and key perormance indicators. The result: Reported

immunizations increased by 5 percent. (For more inormation,

see http://www.microsot.com/casestudies/casestudy.

aspx?casestudyid=4000002422.)

Healthcare organizations can take analysis a step urther.

By creating a unied intelligence strategy that drives high

perormance, data assets can be leveraged, which in turn

drives business transormation, discovery and innovation.

The need or such a strategy prompted the development o

Microsot Amalga. This new solution empowers users to

answer their own questions, thus enabling agility and real-

time perormance improvement.

When the two strategies work together, Amalgathe

unied intelligence systemcreates a data platorm rom

which traditional BI can be more easily applied, because o

the ease o use and re-use o healthcare data. Organizations

deriving value rom this combined approach include MedStar,

Wisconsin Health Inormation Exchange, Mott, St. Joseph

Health System and El Camino.

What is the role o BI in helping healthcare organizations

gain better visibility into their service-line spending?

Smolke: Service-line analysis has been o interest since the

mid-1980s, but until now, organizations havent had the

ability to bring the data elements together. Nor have there

been tools that can easily show them where the costs are,

how to gain eciencies and how to improve service to the

patient populations they serve. With both Amalga and our

BI platorm, all users can analyze perormance, see trends

and make better decisions with tools that are graphical and

intuitive. Because the BI platorm is based on the MicrosotOce desktop productivity suite, which has hundreds o

millions o users worldwide, people are already amiliar with

the look and eel o these tools. For example, a signicant

amount o data analysis and reporting is conducted using

Microsot Excel, so its not dicult or users to pick up the BI

capabilities in this spreadsheet application.

Why should all users have access to BI tools?

Weismantel: Look at the scene today: 15 percent to 20

percent o users are employing BI tools to get answers to

their questions. What i you expanded that to 75 percent?

Thats three-quarters o the organizations employees making

more inormed decisions and getting insights into all types o

inormation to drive the business orward. A good example is

CHOP Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, which now delivers

real-time operational data and reports to 100 technologists

and pathologists via Excel and Microsot SharePoint portal.

(For more inormation, see http://www.microsot.com/

casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000001805.)

Sponsors Statement

How Microsoft Business Intelligence

Leverages Healthcare Data into BetterFinancial and Patient Outcomes
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002422http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002422http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000001805http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000001805http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000001805http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000001805http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002422http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002422


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11 February 2009BusinessWeek Research Services 11

Smolke: Were lowering the bar so that essentially anyone

can apply these tools without extensive training. As more

healthcare proessionals make decisions based on the data,

the more accurate the data is and the more useul the tools

are, leading to better inormed decision-making. For example,the Wisconsin Health Inormation Exchanges ED Linking

Project is currently aggregating data across more than a dozen

area hospitals and 120 clinics to make it available in the

emergency departments o participating hospitals. Amalga

is the data platorm or exchange, reeing up inormation

rom multiple data systems across corporate boundaries and

delivering secure, accurate and timely health inormation in

an easy-to-use environment. The system has been rapidly

adopted into the routine workfow o the physicians and, as a

result, participating hospitals are realizing improved quality

and reduced costs. (For more inormation, see http://www.

mshealthstories.com/HealthStories.aspx.)

What can be done to enable clinicians to quickly access

correct, consistent inormation to improve the quality o

patient care and medical outcomes?

Weismantel: Were making strides with integrating aspects

o search technology with our portolio o solutions. The

idea is that doctors could easily search or inormation

on individual patients and be served key perormance

indicators o trends theyre tracking among patient

populations. Were bringing relevant content to them in

an intuitive and amiliar way.

Evidence-based clinical decisions are popular. Why

should a healthcare organization pursue this goal?

Smolke:A lot o organizations have implemented electronichealth records, but these are just a step in the process. The

ability to analyze clinical data once its been digitized allows

healthcare organizations to pursue evidence-based clinical

decisions, and thats really the value BI can bring rom a

clinical perspective. It allows you to go rom digitized clinical

inormation to better clinical knowledge, which can improve

outcomes. The pace o change and the need or agility is

quickly creating a need or a real-time view so that the

processes and patient care can be impacted immediately, not

just retrospectively. Data is critical or infuencing behavior

change in physician practice patterns, and real-time or near-

time data has more impact on the quality o care or patients

while they are still in the hospital.

What are the benefts o approaching BI as a strategic

project or the entire enterprise, based on a standardized

platorm vs. a more tactical, single-department approach?

Smolke: I each department has its own BI solution,

inormation is ragmented, and you cant get a cross-enterprise view aligned around organizational objectives.

Weismantel: You can lower your overall cost o ownership

and reduce complexity by moving away rom multiple BI

projects and tools. A standard platorm enables you to ocus

on what users want to do and what types o inormation they

need as it relates back to broader organizational objectives.

What is the best way to get started with BI?

Smolke: With Microsots approach, you may already

have components o BI deployed in the hands o people

who need it. I you have Oce, Microsot SQL Serverdatabase sotware and SharePoint in place, or instance,

you already have components o our BI platorm. On

another level, Amalga allows organizations to reduce the

complexity o creating an enterprisewide data strategy, thus

accelerating the time to value or bringing all healthcare

data assets together. The result is a data platorm that is

built or cost-eective and rapid change. Microsot delivers a

comprehensive set o solutions that allows organizations to

create a data strategy tailored to their objectives, resource

requirements and budget. Typically, our technologies are

less expensive per user, and theyre easier to congure and

deploy. (For more inormation, see http://www.microsot.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/compare-oracle.aspx and http://

www.microsot.com/amalga.)

What new investments is Microsot making in BI?

Weismantel: Our core strategy is bringing BI capabilities

into the tools and products you use today, whether its

e-mail, instant messaging, Oce, search, etc. The last thing

organizations need is more BI tools, so were looking at

how to integrate BI capabilities into existing investments in

technologies like SharePoint, SQL Server and Oce. Second

is ease o use. Microsot is continuing to invest in how

to do BI in more simple ways. Were wrapping BI around

something thats been around or years, which reduces the

need to learn the BI tool and gets BI out to more people.n

For More Inormation

Microsots Web site oers an extensive collection o inormation on BI solutions or healthcare.

Please visit: http://www.microsot.com/health
http://www.mshealthstories.com/HealthStories.aspxhttp://www.mshealthstories.com/HealthStories.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.%20com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/compare-oracle.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.%20com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/compare-oracle.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/amalgahttp://www.microsoft.com/amalgahttp://www.microsoft.com/healthhttp://www.microsoft.com/healthhttp://www.microsoft.com/amalgahttp://www.microsoft.com/amalgahttp://www.microsoft.%20com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/compare-oracle.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.%20com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/compare-oracle.aspxhttp://www.mshealthstories.com/HealthStories.aspxhttp://www.mshealthstories.com/HealthStories.aspx


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February 2009 12

Documents

Whitepaper Business Intelligence in Health