A small jStart engagement has made a Bluemix PaaS believer out of Nigel Hook, CEO and Founder of Dataskill Inc. “With Bluemix, we provision all sort of infrastructure assets very quickly for our developers” stated Mr. Hook. Dataskill increased productivity by 30 percent and cut sales-development POC time by 75 percent. Mr. Hook states, “In addition to the time savings in software development, [Bluemix] enables us to achieve faster turnarounds for our customers”.
IBM Customer Voices – Nigel Hook
Dataskill’s primary goals for the engagement:
- Reduce the Sales Cycle of Dataskill solutions which require individually coded, unique Proofs of Concept, beginning with their flagship app: ACUMI™
- Position ACUMI™ with the ability to embrace new game-changing capabilities and services quickly
Founded in 1981, Dataskill helps organizations make better use of their data. Specializing in big data integration and architecture, custom enterprise and mobile software, the company has designed solutions for 500-plus companies worldwide. Recently Dataskill unveiled their ACUMI™ solution, which brings free-form text of clinician dictation and documents into usable form to populate an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) and an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system to optimize outcomes. The solution incorporates Natural Language Processing (NLP) using IBM Watson Content Analytics on physician notes, radiology notes, pathology notes, research protocols and other documents to analyze conditions, procedures, problems, medications, allergies, and quality parameters. This would enable high-level analytics for personalized medicine.
Reduce the Sales Cycles of the ACUMI™ solution, as well as, future solutions
ACUMI™ is a solution that leverages Natural Language Processing (NLP) Technologies to ultimately extract patient information from free form text. As you know, patient information is highly regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Like most technologies, a customer wants to see what value can be gleaned from their data. With protected health information (PHI), this requires you to jump through hoops like putting a Business Associate Agreement in place and typically install various components of infrastructure for an on-site POC. To reduce the amount of effort and time of a POC, less on-premise component installs are needed while leveraging existing shared services when possible.
IBM jStart and DataSkill architects developed a hybrid-cloud approach that involves leveraging a small appliance that resides on-premise whose function is to anonymize the medical information, as well as, store the content back into an on-premise data warehouse. This appliance is orchestrated by a Dataskill developed Bluemix application/UI. All the NLP was Bluemix services and by using the Cloud Integration services of Bluemix, all the extracted information was kept on-premise along with the PHI data Dataskill need only provide a single appliance to the customer anonymizing the content. From there, all data analysis is done with shared services of Bluemix. Reduction in the time of component installs of end-customer POCs allows for significant reduction in the sales cycle
“It is a huge deal for us to be able to do these proofs of concept very quickly for our customers so we can show the value of [DataSkill’s] new technology. It is very exciting, and Bluemix is a key piece of it.” – Nigel Hook
Position ACUMI™ with the ability to embrace new game-changing capabilities and technology quickly
IBM jStart was able to demonstrate the ease with which Dataskill can quickly spin up additional new services when they become available in Bluemix. While the Bluemix Rules service was in beta at the time of the testing, sample code enabled a business rule engine (by binding to the Bluemix Rules Service) to accompany the NLP processing. Dataskill is keenly interested in impending predictive analytics and Watson Cognitive Bluemix services. Dataskill will be able to fully leverage all future Bluemix services quickly and easily.
“The advent of cognitive technology and the support of mobile and cloud technology are all coming together at an incredible time. Speed to market and rapid response to customer demand are essential to its continued success.” – Nigel Hook
IBM jStart can show you how to embrace Emerging Technologies. Start Small, Grow Fast.
IBM jStart Engagement Success 