NeoTool — Singular Focus, Healthcare Integrated

OhioHealth
Columbus, Ohio

www.ohiohealth.com

Customer Profile

OhioHealth is a nationally recognized, not-for-profit, charitable, healthcare organization serving and supported by the community. Based in Columbus, Ohio, it is a family of 15 hospitals, 20 health and surgery centers, home-health providers, medical equipment and health service suppliers throughout a 46-county area. OhioHealth hospitals in central Ohio are Riverside Methodist Hospital, Grant Medical Center, Doctors Hospital, Grady Memorial Hospital, Marion General Hospital, Hardin Memorial Hospital and Dublin Methodist Hospital (to open in late 2007).

Healthcare Interfacing Challenges:

• An internally developed interface solution that was a critical component in feeding a clinical data application had become too difficult to support and, like many legacy engines, the maintenance costs were increasing at an unacceptable pace. Over 30 clinical systems were providing data to this highly visible application.
  
• A more robust and cost effective healthcare integration platform was needed to meet both immediate and long term Electronic Medical Record (EMR) connection requirements.
• Finding an interface engine solution needed to be easy to use in several areas including:
  • Building and deploying interfaces
    
  • Mapping and routing to different application data specifications
    
  • Monitoring and supporting deployed interfaces.

Customer Solution:

Implemented NeoIntegrate™ to replace an internally developed interface solution to serve as a productive interfacing solution for the OhioHealth Results Browser (ORB) – an enterprise-wide clinical data repository – and EMR connectivity to referring physician practices.

Reasons OhioHealth selected NeoIntegrate:

• NeoTool successfully completed, in the allotted time, a proof of concept defined by OhioHealth: installing the software, creating an ADT and two ORU interfaces, demonstrating making stored procedure calls, and showing operational capabilities (e.g., logging, message searching, monitoring, etc.). NeoTool was the only vendor to complete the proof of concept within the given timeline.
  
• Robust, simple-to-use functionality in NeoIntegrate, including:
  
• Building interfaces quickly and easily – no programming needed
  
• Searching details within message logs
  
• Rapid learning curve for internal staff to become proficient in using the solution
  
• Cost-effective maintenance – powerful, useful interface monitoring, interface testing tools, and business processing rules and formats

OhioHealth Insights:

Tom Baumgartner, Director of Product Development, leads the organization’s efforts to develop and support ORB (clinical data repository) and physician EMR interfaces. Tom's insights:

"Over the last decade, OhioHealth has internally developed a Clinician portal that grew into a mission-critical application as more and more hospitals were added. In its current state, ORB supports the following:

• Approximately 11,000 user accounts
  
• Recorded peaks of 400 concurrent users during the busy hour
  
• Is used primarily by physicians and nurses, but is also available to many other user types
  
• Used by in-house and remote user populations where remote use is more than half of all access methods
  
• Supports over 40 HL7 inbound and some outbound interfaces
  
• Provides a significant platform to develop additional value-added clinical applications

As part of the ORB platform, we had an internally developed and supported interface engine that supplied clinical data to ORB from 30 different clinical systems. This internally developed interface engine was getting very difficult to support, and we needed our development team to focus on more value-added projects. Consequently, we decided to evaluate commercially available interface engines through an extensive interface engine vendor selection process.

OhioHealth narrowed the field and did an in-depth evaluation of three interface engine vendors. One of the reasons that NeoTool was included in the selection process was because of their positive reputation in the marketplace.

As part of the evaluation, we requested that each vendor do the following in a limited amount of time:

• Install the interface solution on our server
  
• Create an ADT (patient demographics) interface
  
• Create two ORU (results) interfaces
  
• Demonstrate HL7 message parsing and making stored procedure calls into our SQL Server database
  
• Demonstrate operational capabilities including message log management and filtered search

NeoTool was the only vendor to complete each requested evaluation criteria and did it in less than two days. Other vendors struggled to get their integration solution operational or too much development time was required to complete the interfacing tasks. NeoTool was the clear winner, and we have never looked back on our decision.

From an IT cost standpoint, NeoTool’s interface engine provided many advantages. It’s small footprint makes it easy to install and support. Operationally, NeoTool’s solution is very intuitive – from building-testing-deploying to monitoring and supporting critical interfaces.

ORB is an extensive database of OhioHealth clinical information. All major clinical systems feed this database, including patient registration, endoscopy, radiology cardiology, PACS, etc. Our new interfacing engine had to have the flexibility and strength to work with all of our applications. Our objective is to have all interfaces from the old integration engine migrated to NeoTool by mid 2007. After working with NeoTool for well over a year now, we are confident that the NeoIntegrate product has the power and flexibility to accomplish this in a very productive manner.

OhioHealth is primarily a McKesson-based application organization. We use McKesson STAR for patient registration, so it is an essential component in the ORB process. NeoTool interfaced effectively with McKesson and data quickly began flowing to ORB.

After we selected NeoTool, an EMR interface project that needed to be addressed was given to the ORB team. The requirement was to deliver patient results electronically to a large physician practice that used the GE Centricity EMR. In addition to the ORB project, we decided to use NeoTool for this interfacing requirement as well. Using NeoIntegrate, the project was quickly and effectively completed. The clinic now electronically receives their patient test results (lab, radiology, cardiology, etc.) on a timely basis, streamlining their relationship with their patients and OhioHealth. With NeoTool, I am confident we can deliver on the growing demand for EMR interfaces to other clinics.

With NeoTool’s interface engine, we are achieving our objectives of lowering the risk of interfacing with various applications, leveraging a feature-rich solution for the long term, and delivering greater productivity in building and supporting our clinical data environment. NeoTool is enabling my team to add greater value to the hospital and our clients.

Overall, OhioHealth is pleased with the results that NeoTool has delivered to us. The NeoTool implementation and support teams are always very responsive, professional, and helpful. We enjoy working with the NeoTool team and look forward to building on our relationship."

About NeoIntgrate

NeoIntegrate supports the full life-cycle on healthcare interface development. Learn more about NeoIntegrate.