Healthcare Data Warehousing Solution Helps Lower Costs and Improve Services;
Awarded `Best Implementation of a Corporate Data Warehouse' for Solution Based
on Red Brick, Brio Technology, Sun Microsystems, Inc. and VIPS Healthcare
Information Solutions
CHICAGO, THE DATA WAREHOUSING INSTITUTE CONFERENCE, May 18 /PRNewswire/ --
Red Brick(R) Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: REDB), The Data Warehouse Company(R),
today announced that Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association Federal Employees
Program's (BCBSA FEP) award for "Best Implementation, Corporate Data
Warehouse" signified the healthcare provider's ability to meet and sustain its
business objectives while reducing costs and improving services. The award
was bestowed on BCBSA as part of the prestigious 1998 Best Practices in Data
Warehousing Awards Competition, hosted by The Data Warehousing Institute.
The Blue Cross Blue Shield FEP data warehouse, designed to provide
analysis of healthcare and benefits, is comprised of data warehouse database
technology and services from Red Brick, enterprise business intelligence
products from Brio Technology, decision support software and services from
VIPS Healthcare Information Solutions, and a hardware architecture from Sun
Microsystems, Inc. Blue Cross Blue Shield FEP's data warehouse was chosen
above other leading data warehouse solutions for its innovative architectural
design and successful implementation as the way to meet the goals of the
corporation and individual business units.
This sophisticated and elegant corporate data warehousing architecture has
enabled BCBSA to reduce its cost of ownership through optimal resource
management, and to increase the quality and accuracy of its business decision-
making.
"Our focus on choosing the right partners for success in data warehousing
at Blue Cross Blue Shield has enabled us to meet our business objectives and
lower our costs," said Raymond Pyle, managing director and CIO at Blue Cross
Blue Shield FEP. "This award underscores the importance of these objectives
in today's decision support market. We're very pleased to be recognized for
achieving best practices and hope our achievement will help others in their
data warehousing endeavors."
"We're delighted to be recognized as a part of the solution Blue Cross
Blue Shield chose to satisfy its critical business requirements," said Anthony
W. Layzell, senior vice president of Sales and Marketing at Red Brick. "We
are committed to being a long-term partner with Blue Cross Blue Shield FEP
towards its success as a healthcare benefits provider. We believe Ray Pyle
and Blue Cross Blue Shield FEP are extremely visionary in their market and
this award is very much deserved."
"At Brio, our goal is to provide powerful, yet easy-to-use products that
enable the rapid implementation of business intelligence across the
enterprise," said Chris M. Grejtak, executive vice president of Marketing for
Brio. "We are thrilled that Blue Cross Blue Shield Federal Employees Program
has been recognized with this important industry accolade and are extremely
pleased to join with Red Brick, Sun and VIPS in providing a winning solution."
"We're pleased to be recognized by the award from The Data Warehousing
Institute. Sun's scalable solutions provide for architectural flexibility
while protecting customer investments at the same time," said Donna Rubin,
group manager for Sun's Decision Warehouse Market Development Group. "This is
yet another proof of Sun's strong presence in the data warehousing market, and
Sun's commitment to provide the best solutions for customers."
"We are very pleased FEP recognized the value of our technology and
capabilities as integrators of complex healthcare information systems," stated
Jenny Morgan, president and CEO, VIPS. "This award-winning implementation of
MCSource(TM) reinforces VIPS' position as the market leader for healthcare
data warehousing/decision support solutions capable of handling high volumes,
complex queries and large numbers of users."
The Blue Cross Blue Shield FEP Data Warehouse Architecture
Blue Cross Blue Shield Association FEP processes about 250,000 health
claims a day and about 1.9 million contracts a year in its business to market
Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance coverage to federal employees. FEP is
responsible for efficiently designing and managing programs that meet federal
employee needs for traditional healthcare and managed care services. FEP
manages these services nationwide and serves as the Blue Cross Blue Shield
single point of contact for contracting with the U.S. government.
Today, healthcare organizations have recognized that it's much more
beneficial and less costly to create and maintain health than it is to fix
broken health. In order for BCBSA FEP to be a successful contributor in
creating that kind of healthcare environment, it must analyze volumes of
historical data on millions of members to discover, for example, which
procedures worked best or what variation exists in treatment of specific
diseases from one geographical location to another. BCBSA FEP is focused on
providing analysis of this information to BCBSA Plans, physicians and other
providers in order to help them improve outcomes from treatment and overall
patient health.
BCBSA FEP's architecture was based on two ideals: 1) operations and
decision support are two distinctly different technical environments, each
with its own performance requirements, user needs and life cycle; and 2), its
decision support environment required high-performance and web connectivity.
By separating these environments, BCBSA FEP could design and improve both
areas independently, creating best-of-breed solutions that would assure
operational integrity at high volumes.
BCBSA developed its decision support environment to provide access to
detailed data, to perform queries in both scheduled and real time and to
provide intuitive and cost-effective access for its multiple users in regional
offices nationwide.
BCBSA chose Red Brick Warehouse as the cornerstone of its analysis
environment for its data loading, versatility, query performance and standard
interface which encouraged open partnerships with leading tools and
application vendors. BrioQuery, BCBSA's query tool, enables analysts to do ad
hoc queries in real time, in a web-based environment, and provides scheduling
capability with delivery via e-mail for large reports. VIPS' MCSource
decision support solution and implementation expertise provide healthcare-
specific functionality which supports BCBSA's business plan for the next five
years. Sun Microsystems, Inc. provides the ability to support a very large,
very active data warehousing system. "The simplicity of this architecture and
the ease of integration can be deceiving," added Pyle. "Together, these
technologies make up a very powerful decision support system."
The Data Warehousing Institute `1998 Best Practices in Data Warehousing'
Awards
The Data Warehousing Institute, the leading voice in education in the data
warehousing industry, hosts an annual "Best Practices in Data Warehousing
Awards Competition" to provide thousands of practitioners with best practices
they can follow as data warehousing continues to make its transition from
early adoption to mass proliferation.
Winners are judged on clearly being able to demonstrate their data
warehouse projects are innovative, solve common problems faced by data
warehousing practitioners, could be followed by others, and result in large,
measurable impacts on the business success of their organization.
About Blue Cross Blue Shield Association FEP
The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) is a nationwide
program that provides and administers a variety of health plan products and
benefits for federal employees. Established in 1960, and administered by the
U.S. Office of Personnel Management, FEHBP rates the FEP as the most popular
choice of health plans by federal employees and retirees.
The BCBSA is an association of 55 independent, locally operated BCBS
companies, collectively providing healthcare coverage to 68.7 million
Americans. More than 1.9 million federal employees and retirees are now
enrolled in the BCBS FEP, representing coverage of about four million
individuals. For more information about BCBSA and its member Plans, including
current news releases, visit http://www.bluecares.com.
About Brio Technology
Brio Technology (Nasdaq: BRYO) develops powerful, easy-to-use business
intelligence software that helps organizations improve business operations and
decision making processes. By combining anytime, anywhere information access
with flexible IT control, the Brio Enterprise product family gives the broad
array of end users across an organization access to critical business
information which adapts to their individual needs.
The Brio Enterprise product family is available in four languages on ten
platforms. Brio has commercial relationships with IBM (NYSE: IBM), Microsoft
(Nasdaq: MSFT), Netscape (Nasdaq: NSCP) and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL). Brio
Technology is based in Palo Alto, California, and can be reached on the World
Wide Web at http://www.brio.com, or by calling 1-800-879-BRIO.
About VIPS
VIPS Healthcare Information Solutions is an innovative information
technology company developing breakthrough solutions that shrink the cost of
processing and adjucating claims, give decision-makers the power to deliver
cost-effective, high quality care and benefits, and stop the financial drain
of healthcare fraud. VIPS Healthcare Information Solutions is a First Data
Company (NYSE: FDC). For further information about VIPS, please visit the
Internet at http://www.vips.com.
About Red Brick
Red Brick Systems, Inc. is a premier provider of data warehousing
solutions to help businesses transform data into information for superior
decision-making. The company develops and markets a comprehensive, integrated
platform of data warehousing products and services that help its customers and
partners gain competitive advantage through fast, accurate answers to complex,
business-critical questions. Its flagship product, Red Brick Warehouse, is
the fastest and most scalable relational database for data warehousing,
including data marts, OLAP and data mining. Red Brick is based in Los Gatos,
Calif., with 285 employees worldwide and FY97 annual revenues of approximately
$43 million.
Information about Red Brick is available on the World Wide Web at
http://www.redbrick.com. News releases and corporate background information may also
be retrieved by fax. For an index of available materials, please call
(800) 758-5804, and enter PIN #105756. Red Brick, the Red Brick logo and The
Data Warehouse Company are registered trademarks of Red Brick Systems, Inc.
Sun and Sun Microsystems are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun
Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other
trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective
holders.
SOURCE Red Brick Systems, Inc.
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CONTACT:
Carolyn Hughes of Red Brick Systems, Inc.,
408-399-7216, chughes@redbrick.com
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