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About the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
 The mission of the New York City Department of Health and Mental
Hygiene is clear: to protect and promote the health of all New Yorkers.
In a city of 8.2 million people, this mission comes with a challenge: producing,
accounting for and analyzing an extremely high volume of health-related
data.
It is the combination of personal dedication, professional ingenuity and
technical sophistication that helps New York’s Department of Health
get the job done. As New York City major Michael Bloomberg notes in the
Department’s 2006 Annual Report, “The focus of our Health Department
is right where it needs to be—understanding our biggest health problems
and focusing resources on addressing them effectively.”
To meet the challenge of keeping a high volume of data, the Department
has employed an expansive information system infrastructure. And with data
coming from multiple sources and populating various systems, the Bureau
of Informatics and Information Technology has identified a need to empower
users with innovative software tools that would facilitate their tasks.
The Challenge
“We needed a better way for Department users to analyze information
about individuals with asthma. The program’s database contains statistical
data on asthma cases in the city and information from medial providers
to determine what services are available and where patients can access
those services,” notes Twinkle Doshi, acting client manager for the
Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention. “Their database system provides
reliable data, but navigating the database structure is complex and this
has made it difficult to query for non- technical users.”
“ If the IT team created all the queries users thought they needed,
it would not only take a long time, but it may result in queries different
from
those requested. These are sophisticated data expert professionals, so
the ideal solution was to let the users develop their own ad hoc queries.”
Rahul Bhosle, a IT Client Manager for the Division of Mental Hygiene
had a similar challenge. “The Department utilizes what amounts to a small
army of service providers to meet the service need of patients,” notes
Bhosle. “The process of tracking their work, their qualifications
and their compensation creates a huge amount of data that can yield important
insights into service utilization and cost controls.”
The Solution
“The solution was to provide users with Logi Ad Hoc so they could
construct their own reports. We trained them on database content and on
using the software, since it is a greatly user-friendly solution. Now,
they go directly to their data to get the information they want for program
planning and management reporting,” states Doshi.
“
Use of Log Ad Hoc has also shown that the 10 reports they initially asked
IT to develop grew into more than 20 valuable reports that they were able
to generate themselves. Logi Ad Hoc created a virtually self-service operation,
and has freed the IT department to focus more on their traditional role.”
Even in Bhosle’s case, Logi Ad Hoc was a successful solution. “Our
users know the data. They just do not know SQL. I needed a way to empower
our users to build their queries and generate the 30 or so reports they
need. Using Logi Ad Hoc meant that the challenges of using complicated
SQL syntax to build a report simply went away. And the fact that Logi Ad
Hoc can be accessed via a Web browser made the implementation a very simple
process.”
The Results
Even in Bhosle’s case, Logi Ad Hoc was a successful solution. “Our
users know the data. They just do not know SQL. I needed a way to empower
our users to build their queries and generate the 30 or so reports they
need. Using Logi Ad Hoc meant that the challenges of using complicated
SQL syntax to build a report simply went away. And the fact that Logi Ad
Hoc can be accessed via a Web browser made the implementation a very simple
process.”
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