Cast Iron Systems is a leading SaaS / Cloud integration company with thousands of customer integrations connecting cloud applications with the enterprise. Cast Iron for Google Apps is a ready-to-go solution that provides everything needed to integrate Google Apps with the rest of the enterprise in just days. Cast Iron has added support for the Google Secure Data Connector to let enterprises connect hundreds of on-premise and SaaS applications to Google Apps.
The Schumacher Group is the third largest and fastest growing emergency medicine practice management company in the US. They manage 2,500 physicians who care for 2.8 million patients each year in over 150 emergency rooms across 20 states.
Challenges
Over the past few years, Schumacher’s CIO Doug Menefee has been searching for a secure, efficient and cost-effective way of providing emergency room information to the thousands of providers that they manage. Providers wanted to monitor and measure their performance in the emergency room over time relative to other doctors in the same facility. They also wanted easy access to this information from anywhere at anytime. Schumacher saw offering this service as a source of competitve advantage in the emergency practice management business.
Doug looked at number of ways to solve the problem but they proved to be complex and costly. The large enterprise portals and integration products that he investigated cost millions of dollars and had low ROI. He also looked at custom coding the whole thing but realized that this would not be scalable or reliable over time.
Solution
Schumacher chose Google Apps as the portal for the providers and Cast Iron for Google Apps for the back-end integration. With support for gadgets in Google Apps, Schumacher's providers could view and interact with visualizations of their performance history right within the browser.
Cast Iron for Google Apps provided everything Schumacher needed to exchange data between the gadgets and Schumacher’s multi terabyte data warehouse that contains this provider data - complete integration functionality, including the Google Secure Data Connector and pre-configured Cast Iron connectivity to their backend systems.
The solution works in three steps:
- When a doctor logs in and wants to view the data, the gadget sends request to Cast Iron via the Secure Data Connector
- Cast Iron performs OAuth validation and then extracts data from the backend systems
- Cast Iron transforms the data and sends it back to gadget using the Google Secure Data Connector
Results
Providers and doctors get access to emergency room data via Google gadgets from anywhere, anytime through a secure login. Providers and doctors can use gadgets to chart and compare their performance against others in their community and in the hospitals, which helps them identify and address areas for improvement. Offering this information to the providers via Google and Cast Iron is a competitive advantage for the Schumacher Group and helps differentiate them in the emergency medicine management industry.
“Cast Iron for Google Apps has enhanced the way we develop and deploy our secure provider portal, by providing a cost effective and flexible option. The solution developed by our staff using Cast Iron and Google provides valuable feedback to our clinical providers enabling us to improve the quality of healthcare provided during challenging economic times,” says Doug Menefee, CIO of the Schumacher Group.
For more information, watch this video from the Schumacher Group or visit www.castiron.com/google/demo.
