hMetrix

Overview

Healthcare delivery is moving to a value-based system, where there is a greater need for alignment of payments with outcomes. This calls for in-depth analytics, healthcare experience, and top-of-the-line technology. hMetrix employs all three capabilities to help healthcare stakeholders. Although hMetrix has only 70 employees, its product slate enables it to compete with large healthcare solution providers in the field.

Solution

Seven years ago, hMetrix adopted its first OpenText solution to overcome the velocity and volume limitations of its MySQL environment. The company needed a powerful big data platform for applying, combining, and analyzing large, complex volumes of U.S. Medicare/Medicaid claims data.

It’s great to see the speed, compatibility, and technical progress because of Vertica (now OpenText) in the cloud on Amazon Web Services. But more importantly, this solution is about improving lives and helping rehabilitation managers do their jobs.

Results

The OpenText solution has helped hMetrix serve 50 percent more customers for the past seven years, and still works admirably today.

“Other vendors have proprietary appliances and software, but Vertica (now OpenText) uses commodity hardware,” says Zacharia Mathew, Director of Analytics at hMetrix. “We didn’t have to figure out whether it was compatible. That was a big advantage. This allowed hMetrix to focus on building healthcare solutions for non-technical users to affect patient outcomes.”

Another benefit of this full-featured analytics system, he cites, is exceptional response time, which is vital for querying, comparing, reporting, and predictive modeling some 100 TB of uncompressed raw clinical and claims data.

“In 2009, with the introduction of Vertica (now OpenText), we immediately saw improvements in response times of 70 times compared to our legacy data warehouse,” Mathew says. “Using Vertica (now Open Text) with the Tableau visualization tool gave us the ability to analyze data at the speed of thought—without the development requirements. Fast response times mean that clients are impressed with our work and we can compete with larger organizations. When we show a demo powered by Vertica (now OpenText) that is several times faster, outpacing their traditional database solution, the opposition melts away. That has helped us focus on the client’s business delivering solutions that ease the transition from opportunity to a signed contract. And that’s how we’re able to bring value to our customers and monetize this big data platform.”

Recently, hMetrix worked with a client developing a mental health application using a cloud-based version of OpenText Vertica on Amazon Web Services (AWS)—a high-performance computing environment—to bring value to mental health treatment centers across the United States. The application allows rehabilitation managers to monitor the progress of program participants.

Mathew notes, “We didn’t have to do much to get up and running with Vertica (now OpenText) because it’s optimized and preconfigured to run on Amazon Web Services. In this particular case, we didn’t want to incur the capital expenditure for setting up servers and the operational cost of maintaining that infrastructure. So far it has delivered that promise. In this particular scenario, we will probably stay with AWS for some time.”

In addition to choosing an approach that enables hMetrix to stay extremely nimble and save money on infrastructure cost and administration, the company saves the annual salary of a full-time database administrator.

“Clients have seen our work and they always come back for more,” Mathew says, “and when they do, we have more data. We handle TBs of data, and we update 1 TB of data daily—all without a full-time database administrator.”

To maintain its portfolio of repeat clients and garner new ones, the firm strives to stay agile in responding to their demands. The OpenText Vertica with AWS platform reduced the overhead and delay that companies experience whenever a system administrator or a siloed IT group faced time restraints or fell behind in client report generation.

“To improve operational efficiency and ensure ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) work transpires in a timely fashion, the company delegate’s database ETL work to analysts instead of needing a dedicated database administrator,” Mathew explains. “The simple functionality, governance, administration, and security enhancements of Vertica (now OpenText) enable this process change.”

Whether for its own processes or in solutions for healthcare clients, hMetrix is keen on efficiency. “Our products, processes and tools powered by Vertica (now OpenText) enable our healthcare clients to do what they do best—take care of their patients,” Mathew concludes.

Using Vertica (now OpenText) with the Tableau visualization tool gave us the ability to analyze data at the speed of thought—without the development requirements. When we show a demo powered by Vertica (now OpenText) that is several times faster, outpacing their traditional database solution, the opposition melts away.