QUICK FACTS
HBS International which has been merged with HCIA-Sachs to form the health care company Solucient, used JWAVE to access both the power of the Internet in real time and use customizable visual data analysis online. The ability to gather and analyze data faster and more efficiently greatly improved the efficiency of HBSI's customers and they were more equipped to make well informed decisions and manage healthcare delivery.

THE PROBLEM
Solucient is a leader in providing comparative clinical, financial and operational performance information to hospitals and healthcare systems. Solucient provides reporting information to its clients in the form of a CD-ROM, typically with a two-week turn-around. Reports typically show data and graphic depictions of data portraying the individual institution's performance against other institutions or aggregate data. Reading the data also required that the customer have a suitable relational database management system (RDBMS) or online analytical processing tool (OLAP). But today, thanks to Visual Numerics, Solucient harnesses the power of the Internet to provide customers with near real time, customizable visual data analysis online. The newfound ability to gather and analyze data faster and more efficiently has enhanced the way HBSI's customers make critical decisions and manage healthcare delivery.

According to Kathleen Marzahl, vice president of development, "At first we came to Visual Numerics looking only for a way to allow customers to create and customize a wide variety of charts and graphs. Then they showed us JWAVE and we realized we could get the charting capabilities plus Web distribution in a single package."

THE SOLUTION
JWAVE is Web-based software that allows the user to quickly access and understand what data means, from anywhere, at anytime. With JWAVE, Solucient customers can rapidly analyze, visualize and share critical information immediately with everyone in the organization, regardless of the computer platform. JWAVE features multiple chart types and visualization techniques for quickly creating 3-D surfaces, X-Y plots, polar plots, animations, contours, bar charts, histograms and more. Once generated, these charts are streamed to the browser for instantaneous analysis and examination. JWAVE's powerful image processing and display routines enable the user to smooth, sharpen, filter and fine-tune images.

Rapid deployment of the system was an imperative for Solucient. Several Visual Numerics’ consultants were deployed from its Colorado office to work on the project, and within two weeks were able to deliver the system ahead of schedule.

"They beat the deadline by several days," Marzahl said. This fast time-to-market was made possible partly by the expertise in the Visual Numerics consulting group, and partly because JWAVE's architecture lends itself to rapid development. "The ability to read data from varied sources, create a customizable graphic, and distribute that graphic and the associated data securely via the Web is all built into JWAVE," Marzahl added.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT
JWAVE proved to be a powerful solution in many ways. For example, Solucient's attempt to import data from one OLAP tool proved insufficiently adaptable, which led to an attempt to import data into JWAVE from a second OLAP tool. Both of these attempts proved equally limiting. However, JWAVE's built-in RDBMS import option allowed Solucient to import data directly from the Oracle database that had served as a source for the OLAP tools. "The OLAP tools were extraneous, and unnecessarily restricted data format and volume," Marzahl said. "JWAVE already had the solution inside."

Marzahl sums up the advantages JWAVE offers Solucient's customers. "A typical customer wants, for example, information on the frequency of occurrence of a medical procedure broken out by age range, gender, and time of year. All that they have to do is use any Java-enabled Web browser to access Solucient's secure server, get the data in a useful graphic, and customize that graphic in real time. This is real progress."

JWAVE demonstrates again the tremendous untapped potential of the Web for making knowledge available to those who need it.

WORLD CLASS PRODUCTS, SERVICES, AND SUPPORT
Visual Numerics has provided technical software solutions for numerical analysis and visualization for over 30 years. The company's software products help users understand complex data from a variety of sources and build business-critical applications. Visual Numerics offers two product lines: the IMSL® Numerical Libraries for powerful mathematical and statistical analysis and the PV-WAVE® visual data analysis development environment. Visual Numerics also offers customized consulting services for applications that involve mathematical, statistical, or visual data analysis to meet today’s business analytical needs.