Information Builders Deconstructs Healthcare Blocks

This week business analytics company, Information Builders, took aim at the healthcare industry with a series of offerings that seek to tear down the information silos that they say separate critical patient information into disparate, poorly-connected   systems with a single-view tool.

According to Gregory Dorman, vice president of iWay software, the ability to present a simple, one-stop picture of care information “is critical for customers in healthcare, retail, and numerous other industries, who must accurately process massive amounts of data to ensure the success, and in many cases the safety, of their clients.”

During its 2012 summit and user conference this week, the company announced a new platform for enterprise master data applications called the Omni Framework. Within this framework, the needs of healthcare can be met with some key extensions.

While the company focuses on a number of verticals, this release bears significance for those in the healthcare field since it ties in directly with another new platform, the Omni-Patient application product. The company says that this healthcare tools lets users gain a single, complete picture of data sourced from the patient, the provider, and the physician, which will equip healthcare providers with the ability to “facilitate full validation of patient identification across the enterprise and a 360-degree view of the continuum of care.”

We followed up with iWay software’s Gregory Dorman to discuss how healthcare needs are being addressed by integration platforms.

Can you describe broadly but with an eye on technical underpinnings (our readers are data scientists/IT management) the Omni Framework?

Omni is built on a robust master data application platform that optimizes relationship hierarchies, data models, integration design, and data movement. It is targeted to multiple vertical domains with an integrated application that allows for seamless integrity, integration and intelligence capabilities. 

In the context of the answer above, how is this useful for “big healthcare data” via the newly-announced Omni-Patient application for healthcare?

Omni-Patient is a foundation for monitoring the continuum of care though- out the patient’s life.  The supporting data model provides three interrelated critical components to achieving these objectives.  The first manages the unique patient identifier across the enterprise.  The second provides for transaction data repositories for managing clinical information and financial information. The last and most relevant to Big Data is the repository for the enterprise data warehouse and associated data marts.

These informational components can be extended to include Big Data repositories for analytical purposes. Information Builders’ R&D team has extensively tested our models on multiple appliances to validate and plan their inclusion in the Omni strategy.

How does this fit in with your other analytics offerings and what new markets do you hope to reach as a business over the next year?

Our phase one Omni platform brings the customer from source applications and systems through to an integrated master data environment to the data warehouse.  This can be exploited by our business intelligence and analytical applications at an enterprise level.  However, we also have plans in later releases to provide a foundation for performance management for each vertical implementation.  Information Builders is uniquely positioned to utilize our experience with the end-user information management both inside and outside the firewall. 

Our current plan is to release a product/item based retail offering later this year into early 2013.  Other vertical solutions are in R&D now and will follow.