Genesee Health System RFI-Business Intelligence & Analytics with Dashboard Reporting Questions and Answers 1. Is there any other information required other than that listed in Section II? Respondents must read and thoroughly understand the response requirements. Section II. contains the majority of the written responses required. Section III. is a required sheet for inclusion; and, the Service Description in Section I. contains our best understanding to this point and we ask vendors to present their products and services which they believe will best meet our needs based upon the respondent s past experience. 2. Is there an additional questionnaire not posted on the GHS website? No. This Q & A will be the last update prior to receiving Respondent submissions. 3. Is it correct to assume that the Board would prefer a web-based, hosted BI and Analytics solution? GHS preference would be to host the solution on our GHS servers, but remain open to alternatives. 4. If a web-based solution is preferred, would the solution be hosted on GHS internal servers or would the Board prefer the respondent also provide third-party hosting services? GHS preference would be to host the solution on our GHS servers, but remain open to alternatives. 5. What source databases are to be used for the Analytics and Dashboards? SQL and Excel. 6. Do multiple groups need varying levels of access to the Analytics and Dashboards? Yes. 7. Will additional data sources be combined with centralized data on an ad hoc or permanent basis? Yes expected permanent basis as long as this remains relevant and cost effective. 8. Will distributed data sources be combined regularly for consolidated reporting? Yes, anticipating data to be refreshed nightly.
9. What are some examples of the type of reports/analytics/dashboards that must be provided? This up to the Vendors to explore and educate GHS scoring team based upon the Respondent s past experience and understanding. 10. How many locations do they have and what is their interest in Cloud? Would they even consider virtual private cloud (appliance)? We do not need this functionality. 11. You mention comparing to historical norms or set standards. Would this be based on internal or external data? Current expectation is that external data will be provided regularly to GHS from the source and updated nightly for incorporation into GHS internal data sets. 12. Are you looking more for a turnkey healthcare specific solution or a platform on which to build an analytic environment? Turnkey healthcare specific solution. GHS envisions that multiple departments will desire to make use of the Business Intelligence & Analytics solution selected, but if you offer or have prepared to offer healthcare specific solutions, you would be well advised to include this information as part of your presentation and response as this is of particular interest to the FQHC and other similar departments within GHS. 13. What are they doing for analytics today? What is working well with it? What is missing/not working? What are the key challenges? We are not doing analytics at this time, other than ad-hoc reporting. 14. What are the key changes in how they do business that they anticipate from this new initiative? Increase compliance with standards. Increase proactive management of underperforming areas. Provide situational awareness. Plus, more 15. They stated that should an appropriate solution not be identified or agreed upon the Board may choose to re-solicit or make no award. What would motivate them to take action vs. not? Unacceptably low response volume from vendors; too costly; does not meet needs as presented; not broad enough to make the venture worthwhile; change in direction; funding streams reduced; limited perceived benefit based on submissions and presentations, etc. 16. Approximately how many users would create reports and view reports using the BI Application? IT Developers (advanced Sr. Execs, Casual Users, Power users, SMEs (medium Research Data Scientists,
skills) (lower skills) skills) Statisticians (advanced skills) Create reports Slice/Dice reports View reports Create Dashbds Use Dashbds There is no exact number. Expectedly less than 25. 17. Will they be concurrent or named users? Named users 18. Will you be adopting a train-the-trainer approach or would we train everyone? What numbers of trainers & students for training? Train-the-trainer approach may be acceptable. Open to various training methodologies. 19. Will servers be on your premise or vendor s premise (cloud) or hybrid (data on site BI app in the cloud)? On-premise 20. What types of date sources exist (Relational, XML, CSV. OLAP, HADOOP, Web Services, etc.)? Relational, SQL, CSV 21. The RFI mentioned SQL Server as data source. Where is the data being sourced from? Please discuss the data models that we will be using as sources-how many? Star schema? OLAP? Are they mature or just recently productionized? Is there a need to combine disparate sources into one view? 22. Is building data marts part of this project? Present options. Discuss merits of using data marts & projected costs to maintain. Open to discussion. 23. Describe the ETL tool that will be used in the proposed solution. User-friendly. Powerful enough for IT and finance, but easy to use for a non-technical person. 24. Include details regarding any open APIs, native application integrations, adaptors, data integrations and/or data capture tools.
There are no open API s. We have an on premise SQL server where most of our data are stored. 25. Are the reports/dashboards required to present data being refreshing in real time/near real time? Near real time; nightly refreshing of data including data from alternate sources. 26. What level of data governance is required? i.e. will we be able to successfully test reports against your current sources or will tests fail due to data quality issues? Yes, we have some in-house ad hoc reports we have created and run which we can test against for validity. 27. Describe the data quality tools (profiling, cleansing, etc.) that you are currently using to support the preparation of data for business intelligence applications and reporting. GHS is new to the Business Intelligence & Dashboard Reporting with Analytics. Upgrade from traditional electronic files & paper reporting reviews. 28. Describe the master data management processes you are currently using to master data. 29. What operating system will it be installed on, or is this for us to provide? Windows 8 & 10, Windows Server 2012 R2; GHS will provide. 30. What servers will it be installed on, or is this for us to provide? Preference for existing GHS on-site servers. GHS IT department to specify/clarify, as needed. 31. Describe the required predictive analytical capabilities of the proposed solution. Include details regarding: forecasting and predictive tools, scorecards, what if modeling tools, statistical modeling tools, regression analysis, cluster analysis, etc. Varies by department; not otherwise specified. 32. Does the solution require geographical mapping (i.e. visual presentations of regional utilization and rates in populations or links to Google Maps, etc.)? This functionality could benefit clinical department? There could be effective mapping of clients seen daily, in the order seen by each clinician. How much does a clinician s day change based upon emergent client acuity? More ) 33. What are the mobile requirements? Do you have a BYOD policy? What types of cell phones must it work with? Android Browser (Android 3.2 or later), Apple Safari 3.x or later (including Safari on the ipad), Google Chrome? GHS would prefer the solution to work well on an Apple ipad. There are other devices at the agency, but management is currently supplied with ipads.
34. What are the archiving, searching and library requirements? i.e. is the system required to keep records of report versions and archive older reports? Yes, historical look backs. 35. Will the dashboards be embedded into GHS internal or external portals either now or in the future? Possibly yes. Explain challenges/best match ups to embed within GHS internal portals. 36. Is there a need to filter data based on who is logged in? Yes. 37. Do alerts need to be sent out to the users based on any outliers in the data? Yes. 38. Do the dashboards need to be delivered to the users on a periodic basis? Daily refresh. 39. Has GHS considered a model where staff and/or end users can be supported through a Helpdesk? If so, do you require 24x7 support or after hours support? Helpdesk is beneficial. 24/7 may not be needed. 40. There is no mention of infrastructure to support this project. Is scoping the required infrastructure part of this RFI? If so, is backup part of the infrastructure requirements? Please provide network diagram for where the Data Warehouse sits on the network. Please provide LAN connectivity Bandwidth and specifications i.e. 1 GB or 10 GB, Ethernet or Fiber Channel, etc. Information determined not to be needed at this time, for RFI responses. 41. Are there any other data sources, other than SQL data, like Excel, flat files or some other format we need to connect to for reporting? No, not at this time. 42. Can you please give us an overview of what kind of data we will be working with? Wide open, not fully defined. 43. Do the current data sets have any PHI information that we need to mask before using for dashboards? PHI-very restrictive, masked at certain levels. Example: Clinician A should be able to drill down to his/her own client data level, but not down to another clinician s client data. All clinicians should be able to aggregate data. Clinical Supervisor may be able to see down to the client level for each of their staff members. Identification of the quantity of outliers by category for each clinician and in aggregate.
44. What are the top five KPIs you are looking for? To be established following presentations. 45. What are the business use cases you would like to cover in POC? To be establish following presentations. 46. Who are the end users of the dashboards-service providers, clinics, board executives, etc.? How many users? Not pinned down at this time. Roll out to multiple departments over time as appropriate. Still developing... 47. Do you have a preference for cloud vs. on-premise installation? Open to both options but prefer on-premises installation. 48. What are the reporting tools you currently use? Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services 49. Are you planning to migrate the reports from the existing tool to new tool or build new dashboards with the new solution? No existing tool. 50. What is the volume of data you are expecting on a daily, weekly or monthly basis? 7 Gb nightly download. 51. It looks like you are interested in running historical analysis as well so do you know the historical data volumes? 60 Gb. 52. Do you need end-user training as well along with developer training? If so, how many users for training? Yes and yes. Users vs. Developers-only, GHS to decide after presentations & discussions. 53. Do you need help in creating the Data-Models for the Dashboards? Yes. 54. Would you be providing the Systems Analysts, DBA, SME support for the project? Yes 55. Are there any other specific features you are looking for in the visualization tool, other than the ones mentioned in the RFI? Left open to potential vendors to educate & recommend solutions.
56. Would you prefer a higher upfront cost model with ongoing expenses or a predictable monthly pricing model? Recommend to offer both options, if available. 57. Please share more information about the types of data to be collected and analyzed for each of the following groups: IT Manager, Business Manager, Clinical Manager, Clinician, other roles who may interact with the data. GHS has not thoroughly explored all areas which might benefit from the process and tools available. 58. Please share the anticipated number of users for each of the above groups. Various numbers of users will be determined in the future, but is dependent on the complexity and suitability of the selected solution. Presentations and discussions will play a big part in fleshing out the final scope. 59. Please describe the source of the data to be collected. If it is in databases, which databases? If it is in other applications requiring integration, which applications? Microsoft SQL Server 60. Do you require any data to be pushed from our application to other applications? If so, which applications? Unclear at this time. 61. If you wish to have an interface to allow the collection of records individually (i.e. an electronic form), please state so and provide additional insight into some examples. GHS is interested in exploring options. 62. Please share any known information you have about the volume and variety of data. Clinical and financial data 63. We are a cloud-only HIPAA compliant vendor. Are you considering cloud providers? Is your preference to host data in the cloud? No, GHS prefers on premise hosting. 64. Based on the request, it appears that this is a new venture in an area where there are no existing tools or technologies in place. Are there any incumbent vendors providing services in any of these areas already, and if so, who are they and how long have you been working with them? No existing tools. 65. Is it possible to provide further specifics on the selection criteria? And if so, is one aspect more of a priority than others (e.g. geographic areas vs. methodology vs. price)? No. Need to fully explore the options available in the marketplace.
66. Do you prefer a particular Dashboarding/Visualization product or are we open to recommending a leading-edge tool? Open. 67. How many users/licenses will be required for the dashboards (many of them have a per seat license fee but often costs are negligible)? Are the costs for licensing to be considered as part of the RFP, based on number of seats? All costs should be presented & will be taken into consideration. 68. How many users are expected to require end-user training? Unknown at this time. 69. Our company has a wealth of experience in delivering training in multiple formats (i.e. webinar, live online, in-person). Is there a preference? No preference. Open. 70. How many users are expected to require technical dashboard building/editing/manipulation training? IT & certain managers. 71. Do users require the ability to manipulate data in the dashboards in real-time, or are they intended to be for information purposes only? Not previously considered. 72. Are you open to working with two tools? One for data manipulation for advanced users and another for viewing and disseminating information organization-wide? Yes... 73. Can you provide more clarity around the offline data and traditional media? What does this consist of and where is this data coming from within your primary Microsoft SQL data source? No response. Unclear as to the purpose of this question as it relates to the RFI. 74. Have personas for dashboard users already been identified? Will each type of user have their own dashboards? Can you describe the different user groups who are going to work with the dashboard? Not yet identified. 75. Have the metrics within the dashboard already been chosen or should the proposal include a measurement strategy session? Start from the beginning - from the ground up. Time-lines will be valuable for discussion.
76. Can you describe the main purpose of this dashboard implementation and the minimal goal you want to accomplish by implementing this dashboard? Healthcare dashboards are critical for users (e.g., clinicians, CEOs, and improvement teams) who need quick and insightful answers to their questions in an easy-tounderstand visual format. It is much easier for workers to glance at a line in a green range on a dashboard to see if metrics are still in the desired range rather than trying to digest a monthly line item report of patient data. Plus, users don t need to know SQL or other querying languages to dig into the data to find valuable insights. 77. What are their management tasks that should be supported by the new dashboard? Undefined until the presentations 78. Which level do they belong to: operations, tactical, strategic level? All. 79. Are you able to share user scenarios for these reports and expected formats? Example/existing reports would be very helpful. No. Expecting guidance from potential vendors, explore opportunities. 80. These types of projects can vary significantly in overall level of effort, expectations, and licensing costs. Do you have an approved budget limit for this project including licensing costs for year 1, and if yes, what is it? No.