case study

• Evans, R. Scott; Lloyd, James F. & Lee A Pierce. (2012). Clinical Use of an Enterprise Data Warehouse. AMIA Annual Symposium Proceedings. 2012: 189–198. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3540441/

Assume you are a team of business analysts working for a different health care system in a different state.  You have six hospitals in your system.  Each hospital has its own electronic medical records keeping, but there is currently no integrated data warehouse or tracking of information.  Moreover, you have had an outbreak of Hepatitis-B in your region.  There also seems to have been a lot of emergency room visits for food poisoning. 

Your boss has asked you, “I just read the abstract of the Evans paper, and I’m wondering if something like that could help us with our Hep-B outbreaks, or with the food poisoning problems.  Could you please summarize the Evans paper for me, and then outline briefly the steps we would need to take if we were to get something like that implemented?  And finally, please give your opinion about whether a data warehouse like that could help us treat either the Hepatitis-B or the food poisoning outbreaks we have.”   

Write a brief memo to your boss in answer to the question.

Assume your boss has an MBA but no formal IT background, so you need to explain all technical terminology.  

A successful effort will 

• Contain 750 words (about 3 pages), plus a bibliography for the original posting
• Be as formal (or informal) as you would take in a tone with an email to your boss – the only difference here would be that you do need APA citations and a bibliography.
• Pass a reference citation check for plagiarism – cite all your sources
• Answer your boss' questions from both a technical and a business viewpoint.
• Give good feedback to classmates on their postings - here the emphasis is on critical thinking.  Your response should be about one page (250 words).