Customer Solution Case Study
/ Software Developer Brings Self-Service Tools to Healthcare, Improves Patient Care
“With Amalga UIS and SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel, healthcare employees can get answers to virtually any question at any time by exploring and analyzing petabytes of mission-critical information from their desktop.”
Roberto Ruggeri, Director, Product Management for the Health Solutions Group, Microsoft
Microsoft wanted to give customers that use Microsoft Amalga Unified Intelligence System (UIS) 2009 greater business intelligence (BI) capabilities. The company achieved this with Microsoft Excel 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. By using these products with Amalga UIS 2009, healthcare organizations can improve care, boost collaboration, and reduce the training that employees need to gather BI on their own.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published June 2010
Business Needs
In healthcare, the ability to quickly access and analyze data can make the difference between life and death—and significantly affect patient services and costs. In 2007, Fortune 500 software developer Microsoft released Microsoft Amalga Unified Intelligence System (UIS). It gives hospitals and other healthcare providers a tool to aggregate hundreds of petabytes of mission-critical data from disparate systems in a highly available data warehouse supported by Microsoft SQL Server data management software. As a result, clinicians and administrators can gain a 360-degree view of patients.
Although Amalga UIS helps providers break down the barriers imposed by data silos, Microsoft sought new ways to give healthcare providers greater self-service capabilities for analyzing data. Previously, healthcare workers had to engage IT staff to create, modify, and generate reports. Most hospitals employ a small number of IT personnel, and so any changes to reports could take days or weeks. As a result, workers frequently exported information from multiple documents into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. This gave employees the ability to manipulate data on their own, but the process was labor-intensive, the information was not real-time, and a spreadsheet could contain no more than 1 million rows of data.
Microsoft wanted to make it possible for authorized individuals to access and analyze the real-time data stored in AmalgaUIS when and where they needed answers—in their office, in the operating room, or anywhere they meet with a patient. In addition, the company wanted to provide new tools to boost efficiency.
Solution
In 2010, Microsoft added new self-service BI capabilities to its next-generation Amalga UIS 2009 by supporting Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel. With this tool, users can analyze hundreds of millions of rows of data with Microsoft Excel 2010 spreadsheet software. In addition, companies can use Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 with Amalga UIS 2009. By doing so, users can post reports on SharePoint portals, and the system will automatically update any PowerPivot data in those reports to reflect changes made to source data.
Healthcare organizations can useMicrosoft SQL Server 2008 R2 with Amalga UIS 2009 to further enhance data mining and reporting capabilities.IT staff can take advantage of technologies such as Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Master Data Services. With it, IT employees can designate specific data sources outside of corporate systems that staffcan access with PowerPivot for Excel.Hospitals and health systems can also use Report Builder 3.0 in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services to provide users with new tools for presenting data in visually appealing ways. For example, employees can add sparklines and data bars to charts or matrices to represent one or more data points. In addition, IT employees can gain more insight by making use of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight to monitor and analyze event streams in Amalga UIS 2009 with near-zero latency.
Benefits
By extending the capabilities of Amalga UIS 2009 with PowerPivot for Excel, PowerPivot for SharePoint, or SQL Server 2008 R2, healthcare organizations can improve service levels, facilitate collaboration, and reduce learning curves.
Improves the Quality of Care
Health systems and hospitals can boost productivity by implementing new BI capabilities. “With Amalga UIS and SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel, healthcare employees can get answersto virtually any question at any time by exploring and analyzing petabytes of mission-critical information from their desktop,” says Roberto Ruggeri, Director, Product Management for the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft. If medical organizations deploy SQL Server 2008 R2, they can boost service levels by monitoring data flows with StreamInsight for events such as outbreaks of E. coli or the depletion of medical supplies based on radio-frequency identification devices.
Clinicians can create more effective reports with Report Builder 3.0 by depicting data in new ways. For example, employees can use Bing maps in Report Builder 3.0 to incorporate geospatial information—such as the incidence of a particular type of cancer in cities or regions across the United States. Clinicians can also quickly compare data using sparklines and data bars that illustrate information such asthe success rate of four surgical procedures used to remove brain tumors or the effectiveness of a two-year clinical trialin five different age groups.
Boosts Collaboration
IT staff can facilitate greater levels of information sharing with PowerPivot for SharePoint and yet control and audit all data access with capabilities in Amalga UIS 2009. Anyone who views a report that contains PowerPivot data on a SharePoint portal can be assured that all of the information is up to date.Employees no longer need to wait for the next scheduled report releaseor place a call to another department. In addition, when Amalga UIS 2009runs on SQL Server 2008 R2, IT staff can use Master Data Services to grant employees access to preapproved third-party sources. This ability to use data from additional systems can help healthcare organizations improve the quality of care patients receive especially when, for example, a patient undergoes treatment from multiple providersor if organizations share research information.
Minimizes Training
Healthcare staff need easy-to-use IT tools so they can focus on caring for patients.With PowerPivot for Excel, employees can mine data and develop analytical models using familiar tools in Microsoft Excel such as VLOOKUP, PivotTables, and slicers. Ruggeri explains, “By combining Amalga UIS and SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel, we give end users a free-form way to navigate through immense amounts of live information. As a result, they can gain the business insight they need to improve patient care, streamline operational workflow, and reduce costs using a tool they are already familiar with.”
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published June 2010