Case Study 1 - Ross Dress for Less

Sentia contracted with Ross to upgrade the functionality of their Production Recording Application that gathers data from various disparate data sources and produces reports about the efforts of employees in the distribution centers. After an extensive study of what had gone on previously and a code review of how that was done, Sentia proposed its new architecture and Object Relational Mapper (ORM) to automate the processes of the Production Recording Application, currently running in both Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual Basic .NET 2.0. Sentia rewrote the application's various processes, there are a few over 30 of them, in .NET exclusively. Using Sentia’s new Object Relational Mapper (ORM) to automate the process of the rewrite, we ported a new function up in a day or two using only one developer. This means that Ross had the entire application rewritten in a little over a month where they have been struggling with it for literally 7 years.

Case Study 2 - Wells Fargo Loss Mitigation

Sentia was contracted to administrate the Default Account Information System (DAISY) for Wells Fargo. DAISY consisted of several Access Databases linked together to avoid the 1 gigabyte limitation. The application was used for reporting and data was uploaded to it daily. There were dozens of analysts who were tasked with running these daily reports. Sentia saw a better way to get this accomplished. We requisitioned a server, built a database similar to DAISY on SQL Server and then interviewed the analysts to find out their daily activities. In a few months, Sentia had automated all of the tasks the analysts had been given. The reports were run overnight and Sentia designed and built a web application to serve up those reports, freeing the analysts to go do more fruitful work than waiting on a report to finish.

Case Study 3 – NIR Capital

NIR Capital is in the business of securitizing mortgages. They receive “loan tapes” or files describing various mortgages from disparate sources and have a need to load them into a single database. Sentia was contracted to design and build a way to upload these data files quickly, easily and with the ability to add a new schema graphically. This application had to be easy enough to use that anyone in the office could accomplish a simple integration. Sentia designed an application that not only graphically linked the data source and the data destination together, but gave the user the ability to write simple equations to translate various pieces, that is, if a date came in one format and needed to be in another, that could be accomplished. The application also gave the user the ability to up load these files on demand or to schedule a recurring job. Eventually, Sentia added a functionality so that when a new data file was dropped into a folder, it automatically got imported to the database and archived. This particular application was the basis for Sentia’s Information Integrator.

Case Study 4 – LivingWell Health Solutions

LivingWell Health Solutions is in the business of wellness. They send a phlebotomist to a site and draw the employees' blood, have it analyzed and suggest courses of action based on the findings. They also have nurse practitioners onsite with some of their clients in an effort to save on health insurance for employers who are self insured. These nurse practitioners had a portal to type in their findings. This portal was completely separate from the wellness program, but the wellness program depended on the portal’s information to function. Sentia was contracted to integrate these systems. When Sentia got there, everything was done manually. The order for the blood work was filled out with a pen, the results of the blood work was typed in by hand, the course of action based on the blood work was assigned manually, and a canned report was printed corresponding to the patient’s worst symptom. Depending on the severity of the patients symptoms, they were directed to see a physician (or their onsite nurse practitioner) up to three times per year. If the patient followed these directions, they were deemed compliant and were accorded a small reduction in the cost of his or her health insurance. This is where the data from the portal was needed. Again, all these processes were done manually. Adding to the confusion, the patient could see his or her own personal physician. The insurance carrier provided records of these visits that had to be uploaded into the database to check compliance (compliance menas seeing the physician on the schedule provided). Sentia’s plan was to accomplish LivingWell’s goals in two stages. The first stage was to integrate the portal and the wellness application, automate the uploading of the insurance data and automate the assignation of the courses of action. This alone made the business viable, giving it the ability to actually do what they said they could do. Further, Sentia automated a report that brought in financial information from accounting so that the cost per employee could be measured against the associated insurance savings and the improving health of the population. The second stage of the implementation was a complete rewrite of the systems. Sentia redesigned and rewrote the nurse practitioner’s portal into a fully functional, fully fleshed Electronic Medical Records Management System (EMR) based on SNOMED (Systematic NOmenclature of MEDical terms) vended by the National Institute of Health, that contains all the medical terms known to the industry. Sentia categorized and indexed this and made a spellchecking function for it making it searchable, fast and easy to use. We then reformatted this quantified data into an English, human readable, nicely formatted package called a SOAP note (the standard in the industry). The schedules for the phlebotomists and the nurse practitioners and the ingestion of blood test results were both automated. Instead of the old courses of action based on the worst blood test results, the patient is assigned reading based all the factors found in the blood test and the short questionnaire they filled out at the time of the blood draw. These results were no longer mailed, but available through a patient portal, online. The patient can log in, see his or her growth charts (as appropriate) X-Rays, and all the notes the nurse practitioner has entered as well. The compliance process was automated. Every facet of the business has been improved, streamlined and automated to the point that it is not only a paperless office, but virtually a PERSONLESS office