New Integration Platform Is the Best Medicine for One Firm

Metropolitan Health Corp. of Grand Rapids, Mich., had been using SeeBeyond's integration platform since 1997 and recently faced at least its third upgrade. "It's a good product, but the issue has been when [SeeBeyond] upgrades or enhances the product, it requires a significant migration," says Bill Lewkowski, Metro Health's CIO. "We can't afford the time, effort or money to change out the integration foundation each time."

The $260 million, 1,512-employee hospital uses the integration platform to connect core clinical, admissions and revenue applications and gain access to patient data as it travels through those systems. SeeBeyond responds that its latest package, ICAN, solves the migration problem.

Nonetheless, Metro Health decided to look around. Lewkowski and Gary VanderHeiden, manager of applications teams, discovered that a vendor whose database they were already using also made an integration platform. The platform, InterSystems Ensemble, is built on the same technology as the InterSystems Cache postrelational database, which the team is using to consolidate its core clinical systems.

"Once we converted, we did not have to rewrite our integration foundation," says VanderHeiden. Problem solved.

This was first published in August 2005

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