SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 15, 2014) - Birst Inc., the leader in Cloud BI, today announced that HealtheConnections, a regional health information organization (RHIO) serving central New York, has selected Birst's Business Intelligence (BI) platform to quickly analyze and report on its growing database of patient health records for improved patient care. By delivering a comprehensive solution that handles everything from data extraction to visualization, Birst helps HealtheConnections bring the power of information management and analytics to support regional usage and clinical needs.

HealtheConnections oversees the governance and operations of the health information exchange (HIE) for the eleven counties of Central New York. HealtheConnections facilitates and enables the aggregation, viewing and exchange of patient clinical health information among participating organizations -- including hospitals, laboratory and radiology centers, physician practices, and other clinical healthcare entities -- into a single information hub that can be accessed by participating healthcare providers who have obtained affirmative patient consent. With more than 275 participating organizations, the HealtheConnections repository brings together and integrates information from over 45 disparate data sources and continues to add data sources each month. Currently, the repository's 35 million health records account for 1.2 of the region's 1.4 million population, delivering business value to each and every participating organization.

As an integral part of its health information exchange service, HealtheConnections needed a powerful, enterprise-caliber BI platform that could deliver not only broad-based overviews of record collection and usage, but also provide insights into the data itself, allowing the organization to spot demographic trends and uncover emerging health patterns. HealtheConnections chose Birst because it offers a full, integrated BI stack -- including ETL, data modeling, data warehousing, and advanced data visualization -- that can be set up and run faster, and at a lower cost, than traditional 'Big BI' solutions.

"When we were looking for an analytics solution, our focus was on a fully integrated suite of tools that would provide us the capability and flexibility to support the depth and breadth of information needs of our regional participants, stakeholders and populations," said Rob Hack, Executive Director at HealtheConnections. "And with the evolving and ever-changing landscape of health care, Birst is well positioned to help us drive value and innovation."

Birst's easy-to-use interface provides self-service access to meaningful reporting and analysis --without having to rely on an IT department to handle queries about the organization's data. By delivering these capabilities via a secure, scalable, cloud-based BI platform, Birst gives HealtheConnections the flexibility and speed to put actionable intelligence to use immediately. This translates into greater insight into overall health trends, and ultimately contributes to better and more cost-effective healthcare decisions and outcomes.

"We're proud that HealtheConnections has chosen Birst's end-to-end analytics solution to drive its mission to help organizations share medical information and insights to improve healthcare," said Birst CEO Brad Peters. "As a wider array of organizations begins to recognize the value of BI, we're excited to see Birst's agile cloud-based platform used to take on different challenges and uncover new opportunities."

About HealtheConnections

HealtheConnections (pronounced "healthy connections") is a regional health information organization (RHIO) that oversees the governance and operations of the health information exchange (HIE) for the eleven counties of Central New York.

HealtheConnections facilitates and enables the aggregation, viewing and exchange of patient clinical health information among participating organizations. HealtheConnections also promotes the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records for the purpose of improving patient experience of care. Its goal is to support improvement of the care and health of community populations while contributing to health care cost efficiency.

HealtheConnections RHIO is a qualified entity of the State Health Information Network of New York (SHIN-NY).

About Birst

Birst is the only enterprise-caliber Business Intelligence platform born in the cloud. Less costly and more agile than Legacy BI and more powerful than Data Discovery, Birst is engineered with an automated data warehouse and rich, visual analytics, to give meaning to data -- all types and sizes. Coupled with the agility of the Cloud, Birst gives business teams the ability to solve real problems. Fast. Find out why Gartner named Birst a Challenger in its most recent BI Magic Quadrant and why more than a thousand businesses rely on Birst for their analytic needs. Learn to think fast at www.birst.com and join the conversation @birstbi.