Dynamic AI at the Dept. of Health

The Department of Health (DoH) is a prime mover in the area of creating data entry systems and data analysis via the Internet, that allow NHS Hospital Trusts to "benchmark" their performance in comparison to national and peer group standards. The DoH has several million records in relation to the mandatory ERIC performance returns, and this number is increasing rapidly as new systems join the efm-Information suite of which the ASCKEY Data Services "ERIC on Line" development was the pioneer system.

A combination of Data Access’s Visual Dataflex Web Application Server both managing data input and generating XML, and Microsoft Excel for data analysis using that XML output has proven highly effective for both acquiring the data from the Hospital Trust managers and in delivering detailed analysis at the local and peer group level. However, providing in-house analysis, particularly in the flexible "off the cuff" development required within DoH encompassing the whole, rapidly increasing data set has outgrown such simple tools. Something more along the lines of a data warehousing operation was looming in order to produce the needed results. And yet, conventional data warehousing is complex and restrictive for the real time, "blue sky" analysis requirements that are core to meeting the needs of DoH operations.

Asckey Data Services Ltd implemented Dynamic AI at the DoH, which is an entirely web based system allowing for the creation of complex multi-level reports, including comprehensive business graphing. With only two days training (related as much to the structure of the data as to the mechanics of using Dynamic AI), DoH staff were very satisfied with their purchase of the system. As promised, the speed of operation was more than adequate to meet complex analysis requirements.

Compared to more traditional tools such as Crystal Reports and Excel, for the DoH users  Dynamic AI proved to be much less time consuming in creating and running the large number crunching exercises needed. Dynamic AI proved particularly effective at allowing users to set up on screen "Dashboards" monitoring specific data values for conformance with expected values, considerably enhancing the DoH capacity for pro-active action.

Dynamic AI has proved to the DoH to be capable of dealing with large numbers of data records on-line, without needing the intermediate "data warehousing" process of the previous generation of Business Intelligence tools. As a result, Dynamic AI is proving to be a far more flexible tool, all the more remarkable in that it achieves all this without noticeably impacting on overall system performance, or even requiring the installation of any software on the client PC.

For more on Dynamic AI, see our Dynamic AI website.

For an introduction to Business Intelligence concepts, look here