We literally flush data down the toilet every day. Our client, Medic.Life, took notice and recognized that the data we flush away could be used to generate meaningful information about health and wellness trends. They saw an opportunity to develop a “smart toilet” product embedded with sensors and electronics to collect customer health trends in real-time. In the healthcare space, the Internet of Things (IoT) is big business, with endless possibilities for application.
The upgradeable Smart Toilet system would need to provide meaningful information to users that could potentially reveal trends and insights about their health and wellness. The information would include weight, skin temperature, urine volume, urine flow rate, urine glucose, and urine specific gravity. Furthermore, these health trends would need to be delivered via a mobile app to allow a user to track health and wellbeing over time and in a proactive manner. The number of users was expected to be in the millions within just a few years.
Norima has been working with Medic.Life to deliver the entire server side of the Smart Toilet product.
Norima is accelerating Medic’s innovative Smart Toilet project by leveraging our expertise in Cloud/IoT software and data privacy. We are assisting Medic.Life with design, development, and testing for the cloud-based server architecture for the Smart Toilet system. Our work has included requirements gathering, technology selection, system architecture, software development, documentation, and reports as the project moves from development to installation.
We use mature and well-defined software development practices, and our high-quality, tested, and documented source code is subjected to a rigorous procedure in order to be both HIPAA and FDA compliant. Furthermore, we have embedded experience – we understand the challenges involved, and we design and develop our code and software with embedded development in mind.
This project has involved configuration and management of a number of scalable microservices in order to satisfy performance, scalability, and data security requirements. It has also involved integration and adaptation of proven technology for IoT. The Smart Toilet interfaces with a cloud-based system to securely store and process user information. Health trends and notifications are delivered to customers via a mobile app, and users can opt-in to share these health and wellness trends with their healthcare providers.
Together, we have developed a high-performance cloud-based server architecture that provides users with multiple health and wellness trends, enabling continuous health insights for individuals and healthcare teams.
TB Consulting wanted to implement the ServiceNow Project Portfolio Suite (PPS) module for its managed service providers (MSPs).
Norima implemented the project in a phased approach. In the first phase, Norima validated the targeted features of the PPS module running in a domain-separated environment. The second phase is to setup the targeted features for a specific customer.
This project included: Domain Separation Validation, Consultation and Demonstrations, Demand Management, Resource Management, SDLC, Project Management and Planning, and Timecard Configuration.
Encore is a ServiceNow Enterprise customer that wanted to add a Human Resource (HR) specific Service Portal to its current suite of applications.
Norima used a staged delivery process to implement this project, which included implementation of HR Catalog and Task Management, an HR-specific Knowledge Base, and a Service Portal based on the client’s requirements. Norima’s role also involved general Platform Configuration and Branding, Operational Readiness Testing (ORT), Testing and Post Go-Live Support, and overall Engagement Management.
Norima’s ServiceNow delivery team are skilled architects and developers, with a concern for quality and attention to detail. Norima’s dedication and high-quality work had significant impact on both the quality and cost-effectiveness of our new ServiceNow portal. We will continue to leverage Norima for future implementation of ServiceNow modules and…look forward to our continued partnership with Norima Consulting.
– Senior Project Manager, Encore Capital Group
Norima’s knowledge of industry best practices and ITIL framework helped connect skeptical key stakeholders to the full potential of the platform.
– Senior Project Manager, Encore Capital Group
The Global Trade Compliance Group of Cubic Corporation’s Cubic Global Defense (CGD) business unit, a leading provider of realistic combat training systems, secure communications and networking, and highly specialized support services for military and security forces of the U.S. and allied nations, is responsible for ensuring that Cubic adheres to all relevant export regulations defined by the U.S. Departments of State and Commerce.
Cubic required a way to adequately and appropriate manage the critical risk management function of relevant export regulations, as failure to comply with export regulations can lead to severe penalties and business restrictions.
Using the ServiceNow platform for delivery, Norima worked with CGD to create two web applications to facilitate compliance with relevant export regulations:
The main purposes of these applications are to:
Norima followed its Plan->Discover->Configure->Deploy approach to design and build an innovative, easy-to-use solution that delivers true business value. Activities included requirements gathering and documentation, development and review of design specifications, and web application development, testing, and release to production environment.
The Global Trade Compliance Group of Cubic Corporation’s Cubic Global Defense (CGD) business unit, a leading provider of realistic combat training systems, secure communications and networking, and highly specialized support services for military and security forces of the U.S. and allied nations, is responsible for ensuring that Cubic adheres to all relevant export regulations defined by the U.S. Departments of State and Commerce.
Cubic required a way to adequately and appropriate manage this critical risk management function, as failure to comply with export regulations can lead to severe penalties and business restrictions. The application needed to ensure compliance with State Department and DSS regulations, and to provide an auditable repository for the activities related to those regulations in the event of a government audit.
Using the ServiceNow platform for delivery, Norima worked with the Global Trade Compliance group to create a web application to facilitate compliance with relevant regulations.
The resulting application, TravReq, a CDA Global Trade Compliance Service & Data Export Authorization Web Application, provides a consistent method for Cubic employees to notify Cubic of planned travel or long-term deployment to specific destinations, as well as providing an auditable repository for such requests.
Key features of this app include the ability to schedule trips, get approval, generate Travel Briefs, automate Travel Memos, and automate debriefs following a trip’s end.
Norima followed its Plan->Discover->Configure->Deploy approach to design and build an innovative, easy-to-use solution that delivers true business value. Activities included requirements gathering and documentation, development and review of design specifications, and web application development, testing, and release to production environment.
The Insurance Council of Manitoba (ICM) is the regulatory body responsible for the licensing and credentials management of insurance agents in the Province of Manitoba. To mitigate risks associated with their existing technology and supplier, the Council decided to embark on a system renewal project to replace their existing license management system.
ICM selected Norima to develop a new web-based portal for managing licenses. The main objective of the project was to deliver a very user-friendly, “intelligent” on-line system while providing all complex business functions of the legacy system.
In the two-phase project, Norima first addressed stability issues with the legacy platform and then moved on to redevelopment phase. Over the course of 2 years, Norima worked with ICM to design and develop a flexible solution to handle the complex business rules associated with different licenses types and their continuing education requirements. The resulting system was made available for internal ICM staff and agents. The new platform is the basis for ongoing business improvement initiatives for the Council.
Wawanesa is a Canadian mutual company and one of the largest property and casualty insurers in Canada. Wawanesa operates across Canada and in the states of California and Oregon with total assets of $9.1 billion (CDN).
The Claims System Replacement project was initiated by Wawanesa to move towards a corporate goal of modernizing platforms to ensure flexibility and scalability across many lines of business.
This large package implementation replaced the existing claims legacy system that was no longer supported and was a core system that integrated with 30+ other systems with Guidewire ClaimCenter.
ClaimCenter is a web-based claims system built specifically for the property and casualty industry.
The project brought with it large-scale organizational change for both the Business and Information Services.
The implementation of ClaimCenter was delivered on time, on budget and with all the intended scope, and allowed Wawanesa to:
As a result of its success, the Claims System Replacement project received the PMI Manitoba Chapter – Project of the Year 2012 Runner Up award.
Norima Consultants played key roles in assisting Wawanesa with the ClaimCenter implementation, including:
A large independent Broker-Dealer in the US wanted to improve its sales management reporting by having timely business intelligence capabilities across their aggregate data while reducing the costs incurred by external data providers.
Norima provided expertise to assist in the conversion of data feeds from their current providers to a more streamlined process through their clearing firm. Over the course of 6 months, Norima’s experts managed communications with key contacts at various product sponsors and clearing firms, tracked and reported on-going progress of conversion effort, conducted parallel testing of data provided by third party data providers and clearing firms, and developed necessary data warehouse components and related ETL processes to develop the specific BI solution required.
The result was a business intelligence solution that provides better sales management reporting at significantly reduced annual data processing costs, providing ROI almost immediately.
A mid-size financial services company provides comprehensive broker-dealer services, innovative technology, and competitive advisory programs for approximately 5,000 independent financial professionals and more than 700 financial institutions.
The Payout Reporting project was a Norima led engagement for one of the independently managed broker-dealers that is the company’s business partner. The objective of the project was to extend the existing proprietary reporting platform to include new centralized payout administration utilities and the addition of four new payout reports.
The payout reporting utilities enabled program managers from a bank and members of the company’s home office team to set up joint or shared selling relationships for advisors and to manage the associated payout schedules for business conducted through those relationships. The reports eased the process of monthly payout calculations by providing users with a detailed and summary payout report which calculated a base monthly payout for each financial advisor.
Norima provided a project team of five consultants who worked closely with the company’s development team to deliver an integrated solution that satisfied all business requirements and works well within the existing technology framework.
HEB Manitoba provides healthcare and pension benefits to the 60,000 member provincial healthcare employees union. Regulatory changes required HEB to collect and verify essential personal and beneficiary information from its members. HEB concluded that the best option to meet the new regulatory requirement was to implement a self-service portal for their membership. Since this was the organization’s first rollout of online self-service capabilities for their members, a decision was made to bring in external expertise to get help with planning and execution of the project.
Norima’s project team worked with HEB subject matter experts and delivered a turn-key solution.
I brought Norima in because of my past experiences with them both as a technical service delivery organization and because of their solid management team. They have a pragmatic approach to everything they do but bottom line is they have a proven track record for developing solutions and taking them into production. That said, every new initiative is a new test and challenge and Norima had to step up to deliver within some very tight timeframes.
Kerry Poole – Director of Information Services at HEB Manitoba
Ceridian Canada is a human resources solutions provider to 40,000 Canadian customers. A large portion of these customers are small businesses that use the Powerpay payroll administration web application. Norima was engaged to develop the first mobile payroll application in Canada for Ceridian; the Powerpay Mobile.
The objective for the project team was to develop a mobile application that can run on all three major mobile platforms: iOS, Android, and Blackberry OS while utilizing logic and integration of existing web-based Powerpay. Norima leveraged the existing web application to its full potential and developed a hybrid mobile solution. The release 1.0 introduced the Powerpay Mobile for iPhone and BlackBerry, and release 1.1 extended it for Android.
One of significant challenges of this project was to keep up with a rapid pace of change in technology, especially mobile operating systems. During development of this project, Apple introduced iOS 5, RIM BlackBerry 7, and Google Android 4.0.
Powerpay Mobile was awarded with 2012 Mobile-Web Award for Outstanding Achievement in Mobile by the Web Marketing Association.
Ceridian is pleased with the product Norima has developed and plans to continue building on its success in the future.
Our client, a west coast primary care organization that runs several clinics decided to replace their legacy EMR, LIS and PM systems with a new, integrated web-based solution. One of the challenges was to get a web-based replacement for documents management functions of Allscripts, an EMR system previously used. Norima was engaged to design and develop a simple to use and inexpensive documents management system that would meet all business requirements of clinicians and staff responsible for processing of inbound and outbound documents. The system needed to work seamlessly, and to be tightly integrated with the new EHR/PM platform. Our client also expected that inbound and outbound documents, including documents and letters generated by EHR/PM would be handled by the new documents management.
Norima worked with clinicians and other members of medical staff to identify all business and technical requirements for documents processing. We examined essential functions of the legacy systems and patterns of use, and came up with a design for DM application that is intuitive, easy to use, and well-integrated with the EHR/PM system. All inbound and outbound documents are automatically stored in a designated and secure repository and are instantly available for viewing and processing.
The Documents Manager can be used in two modes: as a standalone application used by the documents processing team, and as an integrated module of EHR/PM system. Clinicians and medical staff can see either all documents for a given patient (Patient View) or all documents related to a given user (User View).
System needed to be inexpensive and easy to use for clinicians, medical staff and documents processing team.
Be able to use in two modes:
System needed to support the following functions of documents management:
System needed the ability to capture and provide access to the history of events and changes made to any given document.
System needed to provide the following Task Management functions:
System has to be integrated with fax server and scanners
System needed to be integrated with EHR.
Policy makers are constantly searching for ways to improve the quality of patient care and lower Medicare program spending. One indicator of inadequate quality that results in increased Medicare spending is the rate of readmissions to a hospital. According to CMS, historically about one in five Medicare patients discharged from a hospital are readmitted within 30 days. In 2012, the Affordable Care Act enacts a penalty for excess readmissions. CMS estimates 2,225 hospitals will be penalized $227 million because of excess readmissions in this fiscal year (starting Oct 1, 2013).
Watershed Health and Norima developed a comprehensive readmission risk monitoring and management system to help hospitals identify those patients with a high risk of readmission and to then proactively monitor those patients after discharge to prevent any unnecessary readmissions. Watershed’s ambitious mission went further than the 30 days stipulated by CMS and empowers patients with information about their own condition and readmission risks so they can make better decisions about their health. Watershed engaged Norima to strategically assess the technology options for their solutions and, based on the findings, to develop an innovative platform that enables better patient care while reducing costs associated with readmission.
Founded in 2005, UK-based Qinec offers a web-based, integrated EHR and practice management solution called QinecEnterprise for many types of outpatient care clinics of any size. Qinec offers solutions for primary care doctors, ophthalmologists, dentists, physio-therapists and fertility doctors. Qinec is the only software vendor in UK who delivers all five key components of outpatient care management on a single, integrated technology platform – scheduling, case management, medical records, billing, and reporting. One of the market opportunities identified by Qinec was a market of imaging diagnostic clinics. The key challenge was to integrate EMMA with the medical imaging solution PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System). Qinec engaged Norima to deliver a workflow management solution that could combine key, proprietary radiology modules with QinecEnterprise into one, integrated Radiology Information System (RIS) for diagnostic centers.
During Phase 1 of development, Norima partnered with Qinec and radiologists to identify workflows and system’s requirements for an integrated solution that ensures the patient’s management functions, patient’s electronic health records and diagnostic images are available across both systems. Based on gathered information, Norima is currently developing a RIS solution that will allow integration with any PACS and will provide a simple way for imaging diagnostic centers to build automated diagnostic workflows based on their specific needs. Also, users will have the ability to access patient data, reports and images via QinecEnterprise, removing the need to log into the PACS separately. The goal is to make QinecEnterprise a fully integrated RIS-PACS software solution that includes a full range of modules for radiology departments and medical imaging facilities of all sizes.
Founded in 2005, UK-based Qinec offers a web-based, integrated EHR and practice management solution called QinecEnterprise for many types of outpatient care clinics of various sizes. Qinec offers solutions for opthalmologists, primary care doctors, IVF doctors, physiotherapists, and diagnostic centers. Qinec is the only software vendor in the UK who delivers all five key components of outpatient care management on a single, integrated technology platform – scheduling, case management, medical records, billing, and reporting. One of the market challenges was that QinecEnterprise did not have any dental components for the system to be a viable option for dental clinics and practices. Qinec has engaged Norima to deliver a workflow based dental solution that could combine key, proprietary dental modules with QinecEnterprise into an integrated healthcare management system for dental clinics.
During Phase 1, Norima partnered with Qinec and IVF clinicians to identify the “what, how and when” of the fertility workflows. Based on the information received, Norima designed simplified workflows for users to be able to build treatment plan templates that can meet the needs of each individual or couple receiving IVF treatment. The system is also tailored to utilize dynamic treatment plans to allow real-time functions which integrates medical, investigation, treatment and outcome details. For example, the system calculates all the tolerances for each activity within a treatment plan once the start date is entered and automatically triggers tasks associated to the treatment type selection. The goal for Phase 2 is to integrate the new IVF modules, which include communication, consent and treatment management with all existing features of QinecEnterprise to provide a fully integrated, end-to-end IVF clinic management solution.
The American Board of Family Medicine is the second-largest medical specialty board in the United States with a mandate of improving public health through certification, training, research, leadership, and collaboration. The ABFM engaged Norima to develop the strategic plan to actualize their Data Extraction and their Quality Improvement Reporting initiative. More specifically, Norima was asked to help the ABFM realize the ambitious goal of broadening the sphere of their Maintenance of Certification program by aligning it with other Quality Reporting initiatives, while additionally achieving access to the data most integral for improving the provision of care.
During Phase 1, Norima helped to hone business and technical requirements for a strategic solution that would enable participating family physicians to maintain their certification, qualify for the PQRS EHR Incentive Program, and empower the ABFM’s ongoing research into improving care. Our analysis covered HEDIS, NQF, PQRS, and CMS e-Measure quality measurement libraries. We evaluated CCDA, CCD, C32, QRDA, and OMOP data standards and the capabilities of leading Population Management vendors to support them. Finally, we assessed the HIPAA/HITECH security and privacy challenges that the initiative would need to navigate to be successful.
During Phase 2 of the project, Norima is conducting a deeper evaluation of build versus buy options to address the ABFM’s objectives. Strategic deliverables include: vendor gap analyses, open source platform reviews, implementation options, and a strategic recommendation to assist the ABFM in selecting the proper course of action.
Founded in 2005, UK-based Qinec offers a web-based, integrated EHR and practice management solution called Qinec Enterprise for many types of outpatient care clinics of various sizes. Qinec offers solutions for primary care doctors, opthalmologists, dentists, physio-therapists and diagnostic centers. Qinec is the only software vendor in the UK who delivers all five key components of outpatient care management on a single, integrated technology platform – scheduling, case management, medical records, billing, and reporting. One of the market opportunities identified by Qinec was IVF clinics and treatment programs. The key challenge was to modify EMMA to offer the ability to configure the unique workflows for fertility treatments. Qinec engaged Norima to deliver a workflow solution that could combine key, proprietary fertility clinical protocols into the integrated healthcare management foundation provided by EMMA.
During Phase 1, Norima partnered with Qinec and IVF clinicians to identify the “what, how and when” of the fertility workflows. Based on the information received, Norima designed simplified workflows for users to be able to build treatment plan templates that can meet the needs of each individual or couple receiving IVF treatment. The system is also tailored to utilize dynamic treatment plans to allow real-time functions which integrates medical, investigation, treatment and outcome details. For example, the system calculates all the tolerances for each activity within a treatment plan once the start date is entered and automatically triggers tasks associated to the treatment type selection. The goal for Phase 2 is to integrate the new IVF modules, which include communication, consent and treatment management with all existing features of QinecEnterprise to provide a fully integrated, end-to-end IVF clinic management solution.