Case Study — Cryosite
“Emerging Systems have consistently maintained a high level of dedication and commitment to assisting Cryosite achieve its IT objectives at the technical level in the design and coding of Cryobyte and in our network configuration, and at the strategic level in shaping aspects of our IT business model.” — Gordon Milliken, Chief Executive Officer, Cryosite
Cryosite Limited is unique in that it provides Australia’s first and only on-line cryogenic (low temperature) storage facility for blood, tissue and other biological samples. Cryosite clients come from a range of backgrounds: from large research laboratories through to individual parents who wish to store their children’s cord blood for future possible uses, from pharmaceutical manufacturers through to HIV clinics. These clients have a diverse range of needs for information about the samples and data they need to store with Cryosite. With storage volumes and the escalating number of data components supporting each sample, optimisation of the management and tracking of these components became key in the maintenance of Cryosite’s profitability and provision of service levels.
To address this requirement Emerging Systems developed an internet-based storage management and tracking system using their proprietary set of software tools. The solution is called Cryobyte®. It allows both Cryosite (and clients) to:
- Monitor the samples and components they have stored with Cryosite
- Manage their own bar coding
- Store information about the components (with complete privacy & legislation adherence) in a form that is unique per component type
- Bill for storage usage
- Be electronically notified of any shipping transactions
Cryobyte is an example of where Emerging Systems differs in its approach from many other software solution providers. The software was designed from the ground up to mirror what the management at Cryosite wanted to achieve for their clients. In other words, this is software designed precisely to suit the business process. The alternative for Cryosite would have been packaged software (if it was available at all). That would have resulted in force fitting the business process into packaged software. Clearly a less than optimal result for Cryosite and for Cryosite’s clients. Subsequent modifications and upgrades would have provided further headaches for the Cryosite team.
The system has been now live since the second half of 2000. During this time hundreds of thousands of biological samples have been handled by the system. It provides for the storage of all the HIV samples for one of Sydney’s foremost research institutes. Emerging also provided the secure network infrastructure design and implementation. This system has been evaluated and approved as part of NATA and TGA approval processes. Emerging provides 24 x 7 support for this system, including remote monitoring and preventative maintenance.
Case Study — HAMB Systems
HAMB Systems is a software development company wholly owned by 28 small to medium health funds. These health funds have a unique position in the provision of health care in the Australian private health market. They account for more that 60% of all health funds in Australia.
Government pressure to provide patients with informed financial consent has driven private funds to provide significant information, which has previously been unavailable. This information was being provided by manual methods, both calculation and reporting. Clearly, provision of this information to the 1300 hospitals across Australia was beyond the financial capacities of even the largest health funds. Transactional volumes are substantial. Most large hospitals perform in excess of 150 eligibility checks per day each.
Emerging Systems provided HAMBS with an Internet based patient eligibility system for each of the funds. The system allows each hospital (or healthcare provider) to securely enter data for a patient and their episode of care. All transactions adhere to best practice transaction control - even across the Internet. Based on this information a patient’s health fund status and individual exclusions or co-payments are calculated.
The system provides a range of reports from financial summaries through to audit details. It provides adherence to all current privacy legislation and reporting. It also provides for a number of additional security measures and auditing facilities that offer significant improvements over the traditional models for Internet security.
The system is closely integrated with the internal thick client system (of several versions) that each of the funds use internally for the management of their business. The transactions are replicated in real time to a Delphi-based system across an encrypted link. Data is kept synchronised with a Unix-based system via a number of parallel interfaces. The system relies on Microsoft SQL Server, MS Queuing, Microsoft IIS and several Microsoft development tools.
The system has been in use since May 2001 and is based in Adelaide. We provide second level support for onsite technicians. All our support and feature upgrades occur across secure Internet links. We provide feature upgrades at no cost as part of their support agreement.
