Emergency Medical Associates Builds Biosurveillance System on Business Objects

Medical Management Firm Tracks Disease Outbreaks and Improves Emergency Room Care Via Customized Business Intelligence Dashboard

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 19, 2004 -- In 1998 when New Jersey-based Emergency Medical Associates (EMA) first installed Business Objects (Nasdaq: BOBJ; Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250-BOB), the world’s leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, its goal was to improve emergency department operations in its 16 New Jersey and New York City metro area hospitals. Three years later, following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, that vision broadened considerably. EMA realized that the Business Objects technology it used for managing emergency room financials and patient satisfaction could also track disease outbreaks. Today, EMA uses customized dashboards from Business Objects to scour for unusual spikes in various medical symptoms, providing the first fully functional, widespread biosurveillance system in northern and central New Jersey.

EMA is a physician-owned, privately held, not-for-profit medical group of over 200 Board Certified Emergency Physicians. It manages 16 emergency rooms from Trenton, NJ to the Catskill Mountains. More than 650,000 patient encounters are tracked annually in the firm's Oracle-powered data warehouse, called the Emergency Medicine Analysis & Reporting System (eMARS). Clinical, operational, physician billing, patient satisfaction, and financial information is analyzed for trends, and made available as reports.

With fears of a bioterrorism attack following 9/11, EMA determined that clinical and billing data could be combined to produce a realistic picture of budding epidemics before outbreaks became severe. EMA implemented BusinessObjects™ Application Foundation, the comprehensive solution for creating customized analytic applications and dashboards. A team from Sapphire Consulting, an authorized Business Objects consulting partner, used Application Foundation to build dashboards for measuring emergency room effectiveness – tracking everything from patient turnaround times to admission percentages. The Sapphire/EMA-designed eMARS dashboard for biosurveillance cross-references patient complaints and doctor diagnoses, and compares the results with statistical norms. Classic symptoms, such as respiratory distress or chest pains, are tracked as syndromic groups. Unusual levels of syndromic activity could indicate the early stages of an outbreak. In response, eMARS sends out e-mail alerts to key emergency room doctors across EMA’s hospital network, which could then alert authorities.

“Although our system was at least in part inspired by 9/11, recent history with SARS in Asia and then last year's flu outbreak proves that hospitals around the country and the world still have much work to do in treating epidemics,” said Jonathan Rothman, director of data management at EMA. “Early detection is obviously a key to our success. Business Objects helps us accomplish this by providing the tools for combining and reporting against huge volumes of data in a timely manner.”

“By utilizing the power of dashboards from Business Objects, it gave us a dashboard framework that enabled us to concentrate our time on working with the data,” said Susan Richards, president of Sapphire Consulting. “To be able to focus on data, rather than developing the dashboard itself, was critical for us and a key factor in the deployment’s success.”

Biosurveillance, however, is only one component of eMARS. Doctors are able to view performance metrics in patient care by day, week, or month. Business metrics such as patient billing efficiency and progress against financial targets are also tracked. And because eMARS leverages the web capabilities of Application Foundation, customizable reports can be made available via e-mail, or any web-connected system. Rothman says he expects better patient care to be the long-term result of the new analytical capabilities provided by Business Objects.

“Business intelligence not only improves business performance, but it helps save lives,” said Dave Kellogg, senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Business Objects. “Regardless of the goal – whether it is to create a healthier bottom line or a healthier population – customers from every part of the public and private sectors are turning to business intelligence from Business Objects to achieve it.”

About Emergency Medical Associates

Emergency Medical Associates (EMA) is a democratically governed, physician owned and managed emergency physician group, focused on providing world class, nationally recognized emergency and hospitalist services to hospitals and health systems. The firm's reputation for clinical excellence, achieving and sustaining high patient satisfaction scores and overall Emergency Department operational process improvement is national in scope. For more information about EMA, please visit www.EMA-ED.com.

About Sapphire Consulting

Sapphire Consulting provides a complete business solution from strategic planning to system integration. Its clientele includes small, medium, and Fortune 500 companies spanning several major industry sectors. Sapphire is also one of only five worldwide services firms to be named a Platinum Partner of Business Objects, the firm's highest given partnership status. Contact Sapphire on the Web at http://www.sapphire-consulting.com/home.html.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company. Business intelligence enables organizations to track, understand, and manage enterprise performance. The company's solutions leverage the information that is stored in an array of corporate databases, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Popular uses of BI include enterprise reporting, management dashboards and scorecards, customer intelligence applications, financial reporting, and both customer and partner extranets. These solutions enable companies to gain visibility into their business, acquire and retain profitable customers, reduce costs, optimize the supply chain, increase productivity, and improve financial performance.

In December 2003, Business Objects completed the acquisition of Crystal Decisions, the leader in enterprise reporting. The combined product line includes software for reporting, query and analysis, performance management, analytic applications, and data integration. In addition, Business Objects offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.

Business Objects has more than 24,000 customers in over 80 countries. The company's stock is traded under the ticker symbols NASDAQ: BOBJ and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250 - BOB). It is included in the SBF 120 and IT CAC 50 French stock market indexes. Business Objects can be reached at +1 408 953 6000 and www.businessobjects.com.

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Business Objects, the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects SA or its affiliated companies in the United States and other countries.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
 
Randy Cairns, director of public relations
+1 408 953 6036, randy.cairnes@businessobjects.com