With increased access to more reliable information, EMA has been able to measure and analyze physician performance, determine the best way to allocate resources in times of crisis and reduce the number of patients who leave emergency rooms before receiving care -- critical issues when diseases like swine flu are spreading. Thanks to SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions, patients in the EMA network move more quickly into treatment rooms, wait less time to see doctors and spend less time in emergency rooms overall. This has helped increase the number of patients seen per physician per hour and reduce the per-visit cost for patients.

SAP software helps save EMA time by bringing together information from several disparate systems so that end users can make sense of clinical data, operational data, financial data and satisfaction data. Since EMA's end users include physicians, nurses and researchers, the organization needed software that could give people access to information in formats they were accustomed to working with, regardless of their technical skill level. Today, EMA's 27 dashboards and 30 daily on-demand reports are at end users' fingertips via an intuitive interface that resembles commonly used spreadsheets.

"As the Obama administration places a larger emphasis on applying technology to healthcare, organizations like EMA are leading the way by demonstrating how business intelligence software can help change and save lives," said Marge Breya, executive vice president and general manager, Intelligence Platform Group and SAP NetWeaver Solution Management, SAP AG. "With up-to-the-minute insight into swine flu symptoms, EMA can help gauge if and when another outbreak might occur. By sharing this data with its own network and beyond, hospitals and government agencies can all benefit from the valuable information by changing staffing and response plans, which helps to increase quality of care while reducing costs."

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