Business Opportunity: A National Health Insurer sought a high-performance environment to generate analytic facts based on member claim history and other data elements. The customer also requested that the system allow for new analytic models to be implemented frequently, at low cost and with a fast time-to-market.

Our Role: Vision Technologies designed and built an environment that centered around 3 distinct domains: Framework Components; Analytic Models; Execution Control.

The Framework components are designed to handle the more complex functions in a high-performance system such as multi-threading; data access; error handling/reporting; process workflow and other system-oriented tasks. The components were implemented as message-driven beans and were optimized for maximum parallel processing and performance.

The Analytic models are "thin" java classes implementing a specified interface. The framework components pass data into the model, which analyzes the data and returns analytic facts back to the framework. Model classes are compiled into a "snap-in" jar file included in the engine deployment. This paradigm simplifies model development by allowing the programmers to concentrate on implementing business rules without being burdened with the overhead of multi-threading, data access and error handling.

Execution Control was built as a stand-alone application that allows executive oversight of the environment. Jobs can be configured, started or stopped. Information about run times, population counts, fact counts, % complete, history, and other metrics are available in the Execution Control Facility.

Outcome: An environment that can execute 750 analytic models on a population of more than 15 million members generating more than 100 million facts overnight. The analytic models were written by COBOL developers who attended a Java instructional class and immediately began coding the models. Time-to-market for a model is approximately 4 weeks from the time a developer receives the specification.

Technologies: Java, Spring, IBM MQ Series, Oracle RAC

Business Opportunity: Transform the business by redesigning systems and processes to improve customer experiences.

Our Role: In a project of this magnitude, both Enterprise and Application architectures are absolutely critical. Vision Technologies created architectures that ensured integration with the corporate strategy, framework and standards for technology. We also developed the application architectures and systems designs for several component systems:

An enterprise imaging system that manages customer specific collateral and accounting and trend reports. The system makes these documents available via the web to customer service representatives and health plan sponsors and participants. Its development involved integration with the corporate web site and security system. Load balancing and automated failover implementations were critical to meeting the performance and high-availability requirements.

A browser-based time management and reporting system for claim examiners. This system included cross platform data transfers/access and high availability on all platforms and automated data loads.

A batch-oriented system for the generation of post-enrollment collateral documents for health plan participants. The system included integration with third-party software, parallel processing and publish/subscribe event messaging. Windows Terminal Server/Citrix WinFrame was leveraged for remote users to improve performance and control environments to facilitate desktop management and application upgrade paths.

Outcome: A robust application landscape that significantly improved the customer’s ability to deliver outstanding service and that fit into the enterprise strategy, framework and standards for technology.

Technologies: FileNET Imaging Product Suite, ASP/COM, JSP/Servlet/JavaBeans, UDB/DB2, Windows Terminal Server/Citrix WinFrame, Windows, AIX, OS/390.