Feedback Requested

As I was talking to a very smart friend of mine who is in PR & Communications, she asked me what my company did. As any good technologist would do, I told her that we are a health informatics company and that we have an end to end informatics platform that extracts data from disparate systems and presents reliable information to key stakeholders in Healthcare for better decision making. She asked me again, "what do you do?" and explained to me the importance of simplifying our message. So here is an attempt. Your feedback will be greatly appreciated. Especially if you are in healthcare

Which one of the following sentences resonates with you about what we do?

1. Helping improve quality of care and reduce healthcare costs through reliable information.

2. Providing business and clinical intelligence to decision makers in healthcare.

3. Providing cloud based analytics and data warehousing for healthcare.

4. An end to end informatics platform for healthcare at a fraction of the cost.

5. None of the above, I still don't know what you do.

Plug and Play Business Intelligence?

As I was speaking to a potential client recently, I realized that someone had tried to sell her BI in a box. Even with our appliance Integra, I would not dare call it a plug and play solution. Why? There is so much that needs to happen before you get useful information out of your BI initiative. Out of the box, Integra includes the following:

· The ETL (extract, transform and load) software required to connect and integrate data.

· A semantic dictionary of healthcare terms for mapping source data to target data

· A data warehouse (customizable to house EMR, financial and other data).

· Pre-loaded metrics

· A fully integrated BI reporting solution.

· Pre-built reports.

· The hardware to house all this.

And you still wouldn't call that BI in a box, you ask? Absolutely not! And here is why. Even with all of this functionality built in, there is one thing missing. No prizes for guessing what it is. What is missing is “YOUR" data! Guess what, without that, the greatest BI in a box solution won't be of much use to you.

So let's take a look at what needs to happen before this becomes the BI 'Solution' that works for YOUR organization.

· Implementation Planning – During this initial phase the following will occur:

o Gather full set of reporting requirements.

o Gather testing requirements.

o Gather production deployment requirements.

o Identification of systems of record (SOR) and the tables/fields needed to satisfy the end reporting requirements.

o Mapping documents for each SOR are created. These documents include:

§ Source field name, data type and format.

§ Target field name, data type and format.

§ Cleansing requirements for each field.

§ Business logic needed to translate from source to target.

o Create development, testing and implementation plans for the next phases of this project.

· Customization – The actual customizations are created during this phase.

o Data for each SOR is gathered.

o Cleansing ETL processes are created for each source record.

o ETL processes are created and unit tested for each SOR.

o Reporting cube(s) are customized to support reporting requirements.

o Reports are created/customized and unit tested to requirements.

o At the end of this phase, the hardware is delivered to your site and the processes are connected to your SORs.

· Testing – Testing will be performed to the requirements which typically includes:

o Systems Integration Test (SIT) – Full nightly runs are performed and system is tested for correct technical functionality.

o User Acceptance Test (UAT) – A test bed of users are allowed to use the system to ensure requirements have been met from a business/clinical viewpoint.

· Production Deployment – The system is moved to your production environment and the system is made available to your users for consumption.

So folks, next time someone tells you that there is a plug and play solution for BI that does all of these things automagically, please call me right away! I would like to see this wondrous new thing and pay my respects. You can reach me at kishore@metaanalytix.com

Information Based Design - Next Gen Data Warehouses

Recently, in my webinar done jointly with expressor, I was asked a question: "Is the best practice for deploying warehouses a "single, enterprise wide warehouse" or a warehouse with different data marts for each line of business?" My answer was "it depends on the client". Very simply said. As I was talking to a colleague of mine, we knew the answer wasn't that simple and we decided to write a whitepaper about it. So here we are, with a brand new, hot off the press (or Adobe for that matter), FREE whitepaper on "Information Based Design - Next Generation Data Warehouses for Healthcare providers". Here is an excerpt from the whitepaper:

"Very large companies can afford big investments and long lead times to build out new enterprise data warehouse environments. These can be several year projects that cost tens of millions of dollars, or more. Success (based on full achievement of the initial vision) is far from guaranteed. Not uncommonly, after several years, planning for the “next generation” data warehouse begins to take root and the process begins anew… Meta Analytix and End to End solutions present a white paper on Information Based, Incremental, Data Warehouse design for those organizations with limited time and budgets."

Continue to White Paper here: http://www.metaanalytix.com/page.php?page=15

Active vs. Passive Intelligence

During a recent webinar I gave, I was asked about delivering intelligence to the end user. It got me thinking as to what are the best ways to deliver information in the "I have the smallest device I can fit in my eye coolest toy that you don't have" era?

As any good technologist would do, I thought about the different types of users and how they would access information. Then I thought about "what" information they needed. So, in a healthcare informatics setting (after all, that is what we are talking about here), to me, there are two types of users who could benefit from informatics. The Active Intelligence Users and the Passive Intelligence users.

Active Intelligence:

Take an ER doc, for example. She sees a multitude of patients in a single day, works ungodly hours (trust me, I know a few) and probably works in more than one hospital. If you asked her if she is up to date on the latest research in heart conditions (after all, if you have a heart attack, you are not going to your local world renowned cardiologist, you are running to the ER), she would either laugh at you or worse, walk away in a huff, vowing never to speak to you again. Enter the words that we are all familiar with, Clinical Decision Support. This is a form of active intelligence. Delivery of information to the end user ( our heroine in this case ), at the "point of care", where she can quickly browse through the latest guidelines on heart conditions before seeing the patient or fancier still, input patient information directly into her "eyeball wearable device" and the suggestions are automagically transferred to her brain.

Passive Intelligence:

Passive intelligence in much simpler, but not any less important. We have always heard that "history is a good teacher" (whether we listen to history is another question altogether), but for the sake of this blog, let's say history is indeed, a good teacher. Who are the cool customers of this type of intelligence? Your researchers, your administrators and the people who have to run the "business of healthcare".

So, there you have it, two broad categories of intelligence (and I am sure some of you may have thought of umpteen number of other types of intelligences), but that's your problem!

Meaningful Use - Final Rule - Again!

Ok,

So my sales team twisted my arm to put this on here. So, please bear with me: Here it goes.

By now, you have all read the 864 page meaningful use Final Rule and are prepared to be compliant right? Well, if not, we’d like to talk to you about Compliance Reporting for Meaningful Use.

As you may already know, there are 15 core measures that you have to electronically report to CMS to be compliant. And you may already know that a CCHIT certified EHR alone is not going to help you get there. Let us take a moment to introduce you to Meta Analytix’s comprehensive informatics platform designed specifically for Healthcare, Integra.

As a savvy executive, you already know what Informatics can bring to the table in increasing profitability, improving your organization’s competitiveness in the marketplace and having a single view of your entire organization. Some of the statistics that you may not know are these. Best in class Hospitals that have used centralized business intelligence have achieved:

* Increased profitability from 1%-9% (Aberdeen Research)

* An average of 36 days to receive payment on accounts vs. 46 days for all others (Aberdeen Research)

* A nurse turnover rate of 10% vs. 14% for all others (Aberdeen Research)

Given this scenario, how can we help? Take a look at the salient features of Integra

* Over 400 Healthcare measures pre-loaded, including meaningful use measures

* Enterprise Class ETL platform built in (http://expressor-software.com).

* Can acquire data from your EHR software, SAS, COBOL and others

* Standardized data definitions pre-loaded for Healthcare

* Flex Dimensional^TM Data Model ready for staging and reporting

* Enterprise Open Source BI platform for reporting, drill down analysis and dashboard building.

* Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

* Low implementation lifecycle. (Avoid making costly purchases of individual components and building from scratch)

* Experienced Consultants to work with you to implement your informatics platform seamlessly with minimal workflow interruption

As you can see, Integra is the only informatics platform pre-built for Healthcare and ready to get you to to Meaningful Use in the quickest possible time. For additional information, please see the attached brochure or visit our website: http://www.metaanalytix.com

Contact us for a demo or for your consulting needs:

Phone: 866.611.8595 Ext. 1 or Ext. 2

Email: info@metaanalytix.com

Vendor's view of Meaningful Use

Take a look:

http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/meaningful-use-final-rule-vendors-hitech-40645-1.html?ET=healthdatamanagement:e1348:144427a:&st=email&utm_source=editorial&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HDM_Daily_072010

Metadata & Master Data Management

Hmmmm...interesting topic, eh? Why bother? What can I do? How much is it going to cost me?

Well folks, I am going to tell you a secret. This is a secret that we, I mean technologists, have hidden from you for long. Much like the wall street "experts" who are now "fixing" the problems they created in the first place and getting paid for it, we are doing the exact same thing. This is an issue that we created (I mean technologists). Now we have cool technologies like metadata repositories and dictionaries that can give you standardized data definitions across the enterprise, but we'll need you to pay us for the "cool technology" we created to solve "your issues"!

Why bother?
Answer is simple. Have you ever had Gatorade? Yellow, Blue, Orange? Well if you have, you get different "flavors" of the same thing. Same thing with business intelligence. If you want to call something a pot, call it a pot. Don't call it pot in one place, a vessel in another and a container in another place. Unfortunately, the reality is just that. A pot is called a pot in one system, a vessel in another and a container in a third. If you tried to print out the value of a "pot" for your CEO to see, you would have to sit there and explain "well, it is the same thing, but it may be called a container on page 2"! You can imagine the reaction. Enter metadata and masterdata management! We take the pots and the containers and the vessels, call it a pot, make sure the attributes of all three are the same, store it in a dictionary and charge you a couple of millions for it! Sound cool? No?

What can I do?
There are things you can do and not break the bank while doing it. Old fashioned discipline and planning, for example. And you, as the healthcare exec, is in luck! Because, if you are like most companies, you have a clean slate to start with, in terms of informatics. So, with a little bit of planning upfront, you can avoid a lot of costs later. Incorporate metadata/master data management into your informatics initiative early on. In other words, don't build a warehouse without it! Just like you put planning and thought into collecting your measures, think of having standard data definitions across the enterprise. Reach out to folks like SNOMED to see what they are doing. Trust me, your upfront costs will be a drop in the bucket if you have to do it as an afterthought. It will also ensure better data quality as the data won't get into your system without rationalizing with your dictionary first.

So when your buddy from the other hospital is worried about his/her metadata, you can simply say, "we have incorporated that into the "front end" of our process", take a long hard look at the fairway, judge the wind speed and let it rip!

The Biggest mistake some Health IT Executives will make this year

Now that the Interim Final Rule for "Meaningful Use" has been published and the reporting requirements are clearer, what is the biggest mistake one can make this year? Go out there, buy and implement an EHR solution! No, I didn't wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Nor was there any "extra something" in my coffee! Let me explain.
The basic premise of "meaningful use" is to achieve two things.
1. Improve Quality of Care
2. Reduce Cost of Care.

Now, there will be some EHR solutions out there that will satisfy your government mandated reporting requirements. The question is, will that help reduce the cost of care or improve quality of care? The answer is a resounding NO! Why? The EHR solution, web-based or otherwise, is only going to add another silo of data in your organization. It's not going to show you the "correlation" between "Central Line infection rates" and the cost of care. It's not going to show you the correlation between "Average waiting time" and loss of revenue associated with patients leaving without being seen. Nor will it be able to historically report on the "Percentage of patients given smoking cessation counseling" and how that has improved "quality of care".

So, blindly implementing an EHR slution is only going to add another department that you have to manage. Another silo, collecting data, without producing any "meaningful use" for your organization.

So, while you are in the process of evaluating EHR software, consider the TCO and ROI for those investments. Consider how you can leverage the data being generated to add profitability to the business. Consider how you can leverage your existing data and add some "real intelligence" to the business.