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At Jefferson Regional Medical Center, patient care is technology driven

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CUSTOMER: Jefferson Regional Medical Center HEADQUARTERS: Pine Bluff, Ark. BUSINESS: Healthcare HARDWARE: An IBM System i 825 SOFTWARE: Information Builders Inc.'s FOCUS and WebFOCUS, and a health information system from McKesson HBOC CHALLENGE: Making it easier for people to run and access their own reports SOLUTION: Using WebFOCUS to build an intranet-based reporting tool

Despite more than 10 years writing about technology, I'm not a techie by any means. That's in part why I have a Mac. It's easy to maintain, and if there's a problem, it's usually simple to diagnose and repair. However, I like to play with new hardware and software when I can - just because. For example, I recently downloaded an application that lets me connect to my computer remotely. I don't really need this, but it's fun to play with. And who knows? It may come in handy one day.

So when I recently spoke with Morie Mehyou, assistant vice president of information management and decision support with Jefferson Regional Medical Center, I was somewhat pleased to discover that he wasn't a techie either. In fact, when I asked him, he didn't even know which IBM* System i* model the company is using. (It happens to be an IBM iSeries* 825.) Although he doesn't have an IT background (he comes from the accounting world), he's responsible for maintaining the company's business-intelligence (BI) infrastructure.

This may sound like it belongs in the steely hands of the IT department, but Mehyou has proved that it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. To the contrary, he feels that his non-techie background may be a benefit, in part because he understands what his users are looking for when it comes to actionable information. "I look at it from the end-user perspective," he says. "What types of information do people use? Who needs it? What's the best way to deliver it to them?"

With those thoughts in mind, he looked for and found a BI solution that would work best for average users - without trips to the IT department to run queries for them. That solution turned out to be Information Builders Inc.'s (IBI's) WebFOCUS, which now complements IBI's FOCUS, another BI application the organization runs. Between the two solutions, Jefferson Regional now has an end-to-end BI solution that suits techies and non-techies alike.

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