The University recently honored individuals on campus who devised new methods of using information to improve planning and business processes at U-M. Winners of the 2nd annual Business Intelligence Data-into-Action awards were honored with cash prizes totaling $11,000.
Three teams from the U-M Health System (UMHS), LSA and Michigan Administrative Information Services (MAIS) were honored for projects that save time and resources while showing promise for use in the University — and beyond.
“The University is in a challenging period and needs to contain costs and increase its innovation to meet the challenges of the future,” says Laura Patterson, associate vice president of MAIS and member of Advisors on Information Management Strategy (AIMS). “The collaboration and structure of support for Business Intelligence enables users to learn from each other and leverage the analytical, business process and methodology expertise that exists at the University.”
The Patient Safety Indicator — Case Review System (PSI-CRS) at UMHS identifies otherwise unreported adverse events and provides information about the preventability of the events. When fully implemented, the reporting system will become an integral part of the UMHS system for improving patient safety.
“PSI-CRS can enhance the voluntary patient safety reporting system and identify quality improvement opportunities,” says Dr. Darrell Campbell Jr., chief of clinical affairs at UMHS. “Because PSI-CRS utilizes data sources that are readily available to other hospitals, it could potentially be developed commercially and licensed to acute care hospitals across the country.”
Another honoree is the Key Performance Indicators information system at LSA. The Web-based database pulls together a wide variety of statistical data about the college and turns it into easy-to-understand charts, graphs and projections. It can be used to evaluate trends in faculty appointments, space utilization, student credit hours, graduate admissions data and faculty-to-staff ratios.
“This large, successful and visible project will contribute in major ways to our budgeting and decision-making at a time when wise use of resources is crucial,” says Robin Sarris, administrative director for LSA. “The easy availability of data has already led to cultural changes in the way we talk about resources across the college.”
The final award went to MAIS for M-Reports, a Web-based system that delivers management reports in a customizable, intuitive user interface. Based on Microsoft technology, M-Reports delivers information to executive officers, deans, directors and faculty.
“M-Reports makes data accessible through an interface that requires no training,” says Holly Nielsen, assistant director of Business Intelligence at MAIS. “It established an infrastructure upon which other BI solutions can be built.”
Honorable mentions went to the Medical School Administration — Office of Space Management for leveraging Geographical Information System technology to manage space, and to Dawn Parsons, clinical pharmacist in the Benefits Office, for a drug management program that saved the University $60 million.
The Data-into-Action awards are sponsored by AIMS, a Universitywide group of administrative data leaders that partnered to develop a strategic direction for leveraging administrative information at U-M. The three-year award program encourages teams and individuals to share their BI practices and innovations with the University community. The awards are considered an investment in employees, in an effort to identify best practices that can be replicated to provide business value across campus.
Two projects honored in the inaugural Data-into-Action awards already are in use in other areas on campus:
The College of Engineering created a Scholarship Match tool that combines student data with donor-specified criteria for scholarships in minutes, proactively matching dollars to students
The Medical School developed an easy to use Web-based application, called M-Dash. The versatile tool pulls together financial, human resources, space, local and external data sets, turning them into comprehensive charts, graphs and projections for user-defined comparisons.
For more information about the BI Awards, go to www.bi.umich.edu/events/bi_award.html.
