NEW HCIA-SACHS SERVICE HARNESSES COGNOS E-BIZ SOLUTION

It's no secret that information is the lifeblood of our health care system. In this Web-based society, effectively collecting, managing and distributing that information securely has never been more important. So, when leading health care and pharmaceutical companies went looking for a way to access information more quickly and insightfully, HCIA-Sachs delivered the goods-using Cognos' Enterprise Business Intelligence (BI) solution for e-business.

HCIA-Sachs maintains the industry's largest health care data warehouse and collects data from a variety of industry sources that include hospitals, managed care and insurance companies, federal and state governments, clinics, physicians' offices and patients themselves. With this data, HCIA-Sachs creates and distributes information assets that help their customers manage costs, improve patient care and develop new treatments. One year ago, the company realized that their old paper and CD-ROM-based distribution systems were too slow and inflexible to meet the rapidly evolving needs of its customer-base.

"We needed to find a new approach to quickly deliver information to our customers and empower them with the ability to understand and work with the data they want, whenever and wherever they want it," said Dan Malloy, HCIA-Sachs' vice president for managed care.

After evaluating the products and solutions of several vendors, HCIA-Sachs selected Cognos as the standard for all of its internal and external business intelligence applications. "The Cognos solution is easy to use, easy to maintain and capable of handling massive quantities of vital scientific and medical data," said Tim Shipley, HCIA-Sachs' assistant vice president of technology and development. "But in the end, it was our customers that delivered the strongest endorsement for Cognos enterprise BI. For one service in which we use the Cognos solution, we sold over a quarter of a million dollars worth of subscriptions in just two months."

Using the Cognos enterprise business intelligence solution for e-business, HCIA-Sachs has developed a series of Web-based applications with which their customers can access health-related data through a portal on the HCIA-Sachs Web site. One application enables subscribing customers to track and analyze North American patient diagnoses. Users can access their data through Cognos reports and drill through to OLAP cubes for in-depth analysis of data over factors like time, location and illness.

"We think this is just the tip of the iceberg for HCIA-Sachs and Cognos. We continue to look for new services we can develop with the Cognos solution to deliver greater information, insight and value to our customers," said Mr. Malloy.

For more information, visit www.cognos.com.