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GoldenGate bridges patient data to Sybase warehouse
By Robert Westervelt, News Writer
March 15, 2004
Article URL: http://searchdatabase.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid13_gci955287,00.html
"Everybody would like a cheaper product and more resources, but we're pleased with our ability to extract useful information."
Jack Wolf
CIO, Montefiore Medical Center Jack Wolf, CIO of Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, is pleased with the volume of patient information available at the fingertips of his medical staff.
Instead of pouring though pages of medical information, the Montefiore staff is continuously connected to a Sybase data warehouse. Wolf credits GoldenGate's Global Data Synchronization software with capturing and quickly transferring data among the various systems, data warehouses and applications throughout the medical center.
"Everybody would like a cheaper product and more resources, but we're pleased with our ability to extract useful information," Wolf said.
Montefiore last month became one of the nation's first hospitals to implement a completely automated drug replenishment system. The system runs on SAP R/3 version 4.6C and wireless handheld computers to automate the center's inventory tracking system.
Montefiore Medical Center now operates in a "paperless" environment and uses an automated physician order entry system. It is connected to its subsidiary, Emerging Healthcare Information Technologies (EHIT), which includes a network of healthcare facilities in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The medical center draws on data contained in eight Hewlett Packard Nonstop databases. It also uses a number of reporting applications that pull data from a secondary Sybase database used for data warehousing.
GoldenGate software provides real-time data synchronization of that data, including patient registration information, lab tests and medication orders.
The software is installed onto a database while it is running, said Chris Purpura, vice president of marketing at GoldenGate. It then taps into the transaction logs and copies the changed data as it is moving. Then the information is pumped onto a target system, Purpura said.
"In certain life and death situations, time is of the essence, and what is important here is that users pick the solution that best matches their requirements," said Mike Schiff, vice president of data warehousing and business intelligence at Sterling, Va.-based Current Analysis. "In this case, due to need for rapid replication, it certainly shows that data warehouses are more than just supply chain and customer relationship management driven."
EHIT uses its own analytical software called Clinical Looking Glass to analyze the raw data into meaningful clinical information, said Dr. Eran Bellin, chief of informatics at EHIT.
"At the end of the day, all the raw data with all the tools that are provided still did not result in useful information," Bellin said. "Physicians and administrators want to be able to summarize this huge core data dump of primary information systems, and now we're doing that."
The GoldenGate software allows EHIT to mirror all transactions on the system. The company also has instant failover capability in the event of unscheduled downtime.
In addition, the system can bring additional clinical information, such as warnings about possible drug interactions and overall best courses of treatments, directly to the physician as the order is entered, Wolf said.
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