Network Advantage LLC Integrates Data for Physician Practice

Network Advantage LLC, a HiT Software System Integration Partner, worked with a Massachusetts physician practice serving about 5500 patients to integrate data from three discrete sources: the physicians' practice management system (Intergy by Sage Software), patient lab result data, and a third party web application (Rcopia by DrFirst) to manage pharmacy prescription data. Data from Progress OpenEdge RDBMS, Microsoft Access, and XML documents is combined to create a data warehouse stored within MySQL and accessed through an integrated web-based user interface for physicians in the practice. Allora is used to transform the XML data into relational MySQL data.

Reviewers
 
Roy A Cohen, president of Network Advantage LLC, works with small and medium size businesses and organizations, specializing in database development and integration solutions, as well as non-homogeneous network and systems administration.

Background
 
At the Massachusetts physician practice, lab result data, the office management system, and prescription data were managed by three different applications, resulting in cumbersome operations for the practice. The project goal was to bring data from the three applications together into a unified data warehouse that would be accessible with a single user interface.

Platforms
 
Data originates in the following formats:

1. The physician practice management system (Intergy by Sage Software) runs on a Microsoft Windows server using Progress OpenEdge RDBMS.
2. Lab Data is collected from a Microsoft Windows client running Microsoft Access.
3. Prescription data arrives on site daily as XML files.

Problem Solved
 
Three problems were addressed by this solution:

1. Improve medical practice operational efficiency - a detailed view of the patient is now generated in one screen/report instead of three independent ones.
2. Build a patient history data warehouse - now easily accessible for reporting of data to Medicare and other authorized parties.
3. Create a cost-effective alternative to the implementation of a new expensive, disruptive Electronic Medical Records system.

Selection Criteria
 
For the XML aspect of the project, Allora was the only product that Network Advantage found to fit the requirements of transforming XML data to relational data with ease and grace!

Product Functionality
 
The Network Advantage development team used the Allora Mapper to map XML data to the MySQL database and generated Java code to perform the XML to RDB transformations. When the database structure changed midway thru the project, it was a relatively simple matter to re-map and then re-create the database with the new/changed data elements.
 

Strengths
 
Product strengths include:

1. Ease of use, thanks to the intuitive layout of the Allora Mapper GUI and comprehensive Java code generation tools.
2. Portability of the final mapping and XML-RDB transformation module, due to the availability of code generation tools and runtime libraries.
3. High performance during XML to RDB transformations, allowing the merging of high volumes of data in a timely manner.

Vendor Support
 
Roy A Cohen found the staff at HiT Software very easy to work with, and issues were resolved attentively and rapidly.
 
HiT Software, Inc. can be reached at: www.hitsw.com.