The Scout Association

Leveraging Technology to Transform the UK Scout Movement

Overview

Scouting is currently active in 216 countries and territories with a global membership of over 28 million youth participants. The Scout Association of the UK provides adventurous activities and personal development opportunities for 350,000 young people aged 6-25.

Business need: The UK Scout association had a need to incorporate disparate data, housed in multiple databases and locations and collected over several decades, such as contacts, awards, volunteering history and training records.

Solution: The UK Scout Association has effectively leveraged IBM U2 technology to communicate and manage information to enhance the services provided to the UK Scouts.

Benefits: The new solution vastly improved the accuracy of the data and greatly reduced the administration across the organisation.

Case Study: Leveraging Technology to Transform the UK Scout Movement

Scouting is currently active in 216 countries and territories with a global membership of over 28 million youth participants. The Scout Association of the UK provides adventurous activities and personal development opportunities for 350,000 young people aged 6-25.

The UK Scout Association has effectively leveraged IBM U2 technology to communicate and manage information to enhance the services provided to the UK Scouts.

The Challenge:

The UK Scout association had a need to incorporate disparate data, housed in multiple databases and locations and collected over several decades, such as contacts, awards, volunteering history and training records. The goal was to have one central system that housed records of everyone involved in Scouting that limited the access of member records to those with line management responsibility and also allowed individuals to maintain their own records, whenever possible.

The Solution:

The Scout Association of the UK, working closely with IBM U2 Business Partner, APT Solutions, implemented one centralised membership database and contact management system, Stratum. Based on IBM UniData, the Stratum system incorporates the majority of the previous databases and organisation processes. In addition, the implementation team used IBM WebSphere to gain Web access to the database. The go live for the new system was achieved on time and within budget.

The Results:

The new solution vastly improved the accuracy of the data and greatly reduced the administration across the organisation. In addition, administrators were able to record additional data such as training details and youth data centrally. Another benefit was the ability to target their scouting communications and increase donations via targeted campaigns. By recording all of the volunteers, the Scouts organisation was able to reward and thank them directly for their service. The Web has opened the Scouting world to these 400,000 youths and volunteers.

More Information: http://www.scouts.org.uk or http://www.aptsolutions.co.uk

Learn more at http://www-306.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/CS/LWIS-73GLED?OpenDocument&Site=software&cty=en_us

Southern Radiology

Southern Radiology elevates performance with IBM U2 information management platform

Overview

Medical imaging provider Southern Radiology lacked a centralised system to store, manage and distribute patient and financial information between its five locations in Sydney.

Business need: Medical imaging provider Southern Radiology lacked a centralised system to store, manage and distribute patient and financial information between its five locations in Sydney. The company also needed to manage the digital images produced by modern radiology equipment and integrate its systems with Medicare, the national health insurance scheme, to ensure rebates were received faster.

Solution: Southern Radiology engaged IBM Business Partner† Healthinc to implement its OCCAM Radiology Information System, built on the IBM UniVerse and UniValue (U2) environment. Health Inc managed the implementation process, integrated the application with existing systems and external agencies and provided ongoing support and development.

Benefits: Financial information is now managed centrally, improving reliability and speed. Patient turnaround times are faster, allowing radiologists to see more patients each day. Integration with Medicare has halved the turnaround time for rebates, improving cashflow. With the new system in place, Southern Radiology is now much closer to its goal of becoming a paperless office.

About Southern Radiology

Southern Radiology is the largest independent medical imaging provider in New South Wales. With offices at Bondi Junction, Hurstville, Menai and Miranda, the privately-owned business offers a comprehensive suite of radiology services, including general X-ray, ultrasound, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging.

Medical imaging provider needed to see through corporate walls

Southern Radiology is an independent medical imaging provider with practices located in Sydney’s eastern and southern suburbs. Its team of six expert radiologists offers a comprehensive range of medical imaging services.

The competitive world of medical imaging hinges on providing high-quality, reliable and accurate service as quickly as possible. Providers can easily lose business if their standards don’t meet or exceed those of their peers. Because Southern Radiology frequently deals with conditions that may have serious ramifications for their health and well-being, patients demand timely and reliable information.

“Information technology is a key competitive differentiator,” said Don Kelly, business manager at Southern Radiology. “Medical imaging is constantly evolving and many imaging systems are changing from film to digital. We need robust systems to support these new technologies.”

About two years ago, Southern Radiology realised its existing information technology systems could not sustain the growth, rate of change and geographic distribution of its business. For administration tasks, each office had its own server running individual copies of software designed to service both general medical practices and radiology.

“Our business had no centralisation at all,” said Kelly. “If we wanted information from an individual site, we literally had to pick up the phone and call them.”

In mid-2005, Southern Radiology decided to upgrade the business’s information systems and drew up a list of requirements for the project.

“We wanted to centralise our financial management and patient data,” said Kelly. “We also felt it would improve our service if patients could book appointments at any clinic from any other clinic. Because so many of our tests generate digital results, we were also looking for a picture archive and communications system to manage digital images.”

To meet all these requirements, Southern Radiology realised it would have to consult a proven vendor with an extensive product suite and implementation partners with experience and understanding of the radiology business.

OCCAM and IBM U2 data servers increase transparency

Southern Radiology engaged IBM business partner Health Inc to deliver the technology refresh. In [month] 2006, Health Inc began deploying its OCCAM Radiology Information System (RIS), built using IBM UniData and UniVerse (U2) MultiValue data servers. The U2 environment stores and manages all patient and clinical data as well as billing information and appointment schedules.

The U2 platform gives Southern Radiology a high-performance, scalable information management environment. The MultiValue, or extended relational model, eliminates data redundancies and optimises performance.

The implementation – including training – took about two months. Health Inc rolled out the new technology to Southern Radiology’s five practices one after the other, in order to minimise disruption to customer data and clinic workflows.

OCCAM handles a range of customer management tasks including billing and claims processes, emailing test results to referring doctors and sending patients SMS text messages with information such as appointment times. It allows authorised users to view electronic results on dedicated workstations, PCs and over the web.

Healthinc also integrated Southern Radiology’s systems tightly with those of government health agencies. This includes direct billing to the Health Insurance Commission (HIC), the government agency that runs Australia’s universal health insurance program, Medicare.

OCCAM was developed using IBM SystemBuilder tools – the IBM U2 SB+ rapid application development environment and the IBM U2 SBClient presentation layer. These tools make it easier to build and deploy software by allowing developers to quickly design IBM U2 data server structures and create applications without having to manually write code.

“The system is flexible, fast and robust,” said Kelly. “We’ve had very little downtime and we quickly gained confidence in its stability.”

Health Inc provides ongoing support and continues to develop new applications. Health Inc maintains backup systems at its own datacentre, allowing Southern Radiology to switch systems with little or no loss of data in the event of an emergency.

“Health Inc is run by people who have worked in and understand the industry,” said Kelly. “Their service and support is far superior to other providers.”

Improved cashflow, faster turnaround and robust environment

Integration with HIC has improved cashflow, halving the time it takes the organisation to receive Medicare rebates. The new environment has also helped Southern Radiology streamline its financial management.

“From day one, we could view financial data from all our clinics, wherever we were,” said Kelly. “We can submit all our claims from a single point and access information about revenue from each site. It has also improved our dispute resolution and reconciliation processes.”

The new system has also made a significant improvement to patient turnaround times and the overall efficiency of each practice.

“We can effectively double the number of patients our practice handles every day,” said Kelly. “It takes less time to register patients and much less time to type up a report on their conditions. The system can distribute radiologists’ dictated notes as voice files across the network, which means if one practice is very busy, staff at another clinic can take up some of their typing work.”

The robustness and performance of the new environment gives Southern Radiology confidence it has the capacity to grow with the organisation for the foreseeable future.

“We have a long-term vision to eliminate our reliance on paper across the business,” said Kelly. With the new system we are now 80 per cent of the way there.”

 Learn more at http://www-306.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/CS/EBON-6ZR6NU?OpenDocument&Site=software&cty=en_us

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