Omega testing services help physicians to diagnose illness and monitor treatment. The lab also provides programs to identify potential health problems, combat substance abuse, and promote wellness to individuals and businesses.
Growing Data Volumes Escalate Need for Advanced Technology Platform
Tony Douventzidis is Omega's Chief Information Officer (CIO). His responsibilities, which fall under the general heading of managing the evolution of technology for the lab, include overseeing internal software development for the lab's 40-plus patient locations and the corporate office, ensuring compliance for all regulatory requirements, record retention, data warehousing, telecommunications, and networking.
Early in 2003, Douventzidis began the implementation of Caché-based Misys Commercial Laboratory and Misys Clinical Financial applications. However, before these applications could be put in place, Omega had to convert its database from DSM to Caché from Misys partner InterSystems Corporation.
Why Caché? According to Douventzidis, Omega's legacy information systems were becoming overburdened by growing volumes of data. "To accommodate our growth, we needed an advanced technology platform with powerful development tools," says Douventzidis. "We were very pleased to learn that the Misys applications we were already using were available on Caché."
Smooth Data Conversion, Dramatically Increased Performance
Prior to the actual data conversion, Omega performed parallel runs for two months to ensure integrity. According to Douventzidis, the conversion itself was a relatively straightforward and easy, due in part to the lab's knowledgeable business partners at Misys.
"The migration was actually a wonderful experience," he explains. "Prior to conversion, we ran an Aged Trial Balance to capture current general ledger balances, which ran for over 6 hours. After conversion, we ran the same report, which stopped processing within 20 minutes, without generating an error log. We feared the worst, but when we looked at the output, we saw that the report had actually completed, with balances identical to the penny. We expected some performance improvement, but this was far better than anticipated."
Real-time Maintenance Means No More Late Hours
Measuring the success of the Caché implementation is simple, according to Douventzidis. It has to be up and running all the time. Period. "Caché is a mission-critical application, tied to all the operations that are important to the success of our business," he explains. "As a medical lab, we can't just take down the system any time we want to."
With DSM, any maintenance, including backups, required system downtime. For Douventzidis, that meant coming in to the office in the middle of the night to perform maintenance, something he doesn't miss doing now that the lab uses Caché.
"Now we can define how much space volume sets take and how much the database should grow, and Caché expands automatically as needed, as long as there's space available," explains Douventzidis. "I no longer have to schedule database maintenance each week at 3 AM. Maintenance can happen at any time during normal work hours, so my job of maintaining the applications is a lot easier. I've worked with DSM, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server, and Caché is much easier to administer and maintain. Caché, combined with our Misys Commercial Laboratory and Misys Clinical Financial applications have lived up to our expectations, and, in many cases, they have exceeded them."
Improved Performance, Rapid Development, Competitive Advantage
One of the main benefits with Caché is performance. "The system is a lot faster," comments Douventzidis. "We've written some of our own routines to generate client billing. Under DSM, we had to go cross-platform to pull data for Patient and Client statements. The reports would take as long as six hours to run under DSM. With Caché, it takes less than 20 minutes."
"Another example is writing SQL queries to DSM, which also took a long time to run. Now we can use our database more like data warehouse, writing queries left and right to see if we can notice trends, and we get real-time results back," he adds. "We have better access to data, so we can do better studies to determine how we can better market our services to our internal customers. The data is there. Now we can actually use it."
Another benefit is rapid development. Caché is not a compiled database, so programmers can develop or modify applications in real time. "As an early adopter and test environment for Misys applications, we worked with Misys to develop, troubleshoot, and test in a matter of weeks rather than months," says Douventzidis. "We've also developed some internal Caché applications, and the development tools available are incredible."
Implementing Caché also provided a competitive advantage for Omega. "Some of our local hospitals are not Caché based, and the number one complaint they have is that their IT department takes the system down to do maintenance during normal business hours," says Douventzidis. "My colleagues ask me how I have time to coach my kid's soccer teams, I just laugh internally because, unlike them, I do have the time. Maintaining their database is a challenge for them but not for us. So, I have time to focus on the business of the business rather than the business of the application."
Today's Conversion Sets Stage for Tomorrow's Applications
For Omega, implementing Caché resulted in better performance and reliability as well as less maintenance. Backups are running faster, down from 6 1/2 hours to 2 1/2 hours. "I've wanted to convert to Caché for years, and with the impending HIPPA security, you want to convert your database as soon as possible," advises Douventzidis. "That way, you can get comfortable with the new database before upgrading your applications. With Caché, the overall benefit makes it worthwhile, even with older applications, and we're also ready for the next-generation Misys applications available in 2004."
"I would highly recommend converting to Caché for everyone except our competitors," jokes Douventzidis. "If I had it to do over again here, I would do it in a heartbeat."