When this behavioral health company—with tools and technologies aimed at improving the delivery of mental health services via telemedicine and data analytics—started in the early 2,000s, the conceptual framework for its Evaluation Registry was extremely siloed and made up of multiple homegrown solutions; specifically, an Access database, Excel files, and report templates made in Microsoft Word. Striving to turn the idea of Big Data into a workable solution, the company knew that it needed an integrated and scalable platform to better manage the entire process—from the intake of raw neurophysiology data obtained through a standard electroencephalogram (EEG), to medication and outcome correlations via prescription efficacy algorithms to report generation and dissemination.
Harnessing the Power of Data
After careful research and platform considerations, based on their overall business objectives and growth goals, the company decided that a Salesforce-based framework application was their next best step—and that Apps Associates, a trusted Salesforce Consulting Partner since 2006, and their ongoing strategic advisor for more than a decade, was the right partner to help them take it.
Apps Associates closely partnered with the company’s internal IT teams to develop streamlined workflows within Salesforce, which would help overcome mounting challenges with efficient and accurate management of patient records, while integrating proprietary prescription-efficacy software in the back end. Additionally, to ensure that the implementation considered the entirety of the desired end-to-end input to outcome strategy, Apps also connected a Physician Community Portal for bi-directional data exchanges, via a Cloud Analytics Server for data storage, equipped with a custom-built Salesforce App Cloud for EEG review and PEER report generation.
Streamlining Data Input to Drive Stronger Outcomes
For a journey which begins with the patient’s treating physician or psychiatrist, the Salesforce solution, which took just five months to complete, has been able to help the company achieve their goals and then some. Using the new Physician Community Portal —either on a desktop or iPad—providers are now able to enter patient information (age, gender, and preliminary diagnosis, among others) using a step-through wizard, ending with an upload of raw EEG data in one of 40 formats.
The recipient of the information, a physician at the company, is then able to generate an EEG chart from the raw input data and perform a “clean data” check. The clean EEG data is then submitted to the native backend application, which runs its prescription efficacy algorithm against the EEG data to correlate it to all existing EEG data sets—resulting in a customized, data-informed treatment approach for each patients’ specific needs.
Improving the Provider Experience for Faster Solutions
Today, thanks to the expertise and collaboration from the Apps Associates team, the company’s Evaluation Registry database holds more than 38,000 recorded outcomes for over 10,000 unique patients and serves as an impressive reference tool that’s growing daily. Their new Salesforce-driven operations are now able to facilitate easier reporting on outcomes and the portal provides a flexible and reliable function for physicians to record their experiences with the efficacy of prescribed therapeutic medications. And this new and improved innovative treatment model has not gone unnoticed.
Evidence of high suicide rates in the U.S. military led the company to complete a clinical trial with the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, involving 2,000 veterans diagnosed with mental health conditions including depression, PTSD, and mild traumatic brain injury. From private healthcare to military organizations in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, the company and their team from Apps Associates were able to use the power of Salesforce to turn the idea of Big Data into a workable reality, evolving the company to be viewed as a strategic partner in global health solutions.