CASE STUDY
Biome leverages Ascend to expedite their data pipeline and support rapid growth in data volume.
Enabled rapid expansion for new data sources and reports without requiring new hires
85%
Improved data pipeline efficiency
3x
more data by increased reporting frequency from quarterly to monthly processing
SQL
Improved analyst participation in the building of data pipeline logic with SQL
Industry:
Healthcare; Clinical Performance Management
Technology:
MySQL
Python
Azure
Tableau
Team:
One data team with 9 engineers using Ascend.
Separate analyst and domain expert team.
Separate machine learning team.
Prior Solutions:
MySQL databases for interim storage and data delivery, Data Factory.
Python code (Pandas) transforming data between lots of MySQL databases
The Biome Analytics Story
Technical Results:
Remove bottlenecks with asynchronous delivery of data products
“Checkpointing” ability to stop, inspect / fix, and start pipelines with no reprocessing
Building data quality right into the data pipelines
Economic Impact:
Data products detect performance patterns, anomalies, and clinical behavior using a proprietary library of measures that assess clinical quality and the cost of care.
Improved speed and capacity, identify patient cohorts from messy, inconsistent source data, reduce the cycle time when implementing new measures.
Ability to rapidly prototype new data flows from hospitals, devices, outpatients.
Wow Moments About Ascend:
Learning new, far more efficient approaches to data processing and pipelines
Dramatically raise innovation and what can be done with data pipelines
Amazing personal attention and support in the design and engineering of their pipelines
The business imperative
Biome is a clinical performance management company focused on helping hospitals and health systems deliver better care to more patients at a lower cost. Their aim is to improve clinical outcomes and eliminate $10 billion of unnecessary cost from the US health system. Biome chose Ascend to upgrade their ability to receive and analyze growing data volumes from hospitals, and grow the types of cardiac procedure information it can process. With Ascend, Biome is also set to increase the number of healthcare providers it can help to recognize opportunities for change that improve their clinical practices and reduce costs.
"Ascend has transformed our data processing capabilities, allowing us to deliver valuable insights based on more data, more rapidly. It has been a game-changer for our business."
Biome's Intelligent Data Pipelines
Biome utilizes Ascend as their intelligent data pipeline platform, to scale the amount and types of data their data team of nine engineers can process, while deferring hiring and reducing complexity in their data tech stack. With Ascend, the Biome team can deliver valuable insights and actionable recommendations to hospitals and cardiac clinics with faster turnaround times. The platform also empowers their analysts, who are not developers, to easily access and manipulate data using SQL. The ability to run pipelines in parallel, stop and restart, and handle errors efficiently has significantly improved their operational efficiency.
"The scalability and functionality of Ascend have enabled us to scale efficiently and handle the increasing data demands from our clients. It has opened up new possibilities for innovation and improved our ability to serve healthcare providers."
Business Results
The adoption of Ascend has brought significant improvements for Biome. The team has achieved faster data processing times, reducing pipeline runtime from 20 hours for each customer, to just three hours for all the data from all customers, while improving reliability. The scalability and flexibility of Ascend allows them to handle more data, meet the increasing demands of their clients, and develop new measures and uncover new performance opportunities for their clients. They are continuously adding new pipelines and building new capabilities, leveraging Ascend’s functionalities to deliver cleaner data, extract valuable insights, and drive cost savings for their clients.
"Ascend has provided us with a new vocabulary of what we can do with our products and data. It has allowed us to contemplate different approaches and think differently about our offerings."
What's Next
Biome’s partnership with Ascend has been pivotal in their mission to transform cardiac healthcare delivery. Ascend enables their existing team to innovate, optimize their pipelines, and explore new data sources far faster. As part of the migration process, Biome will undergo a phase to optimize their data workflows, with a goal to reduce costs and time in their pipelines. In parallel, a separate engineering team is looking at Ascend to unlock more potential for new data products and insights, and deliver greater value to their clients. They are excited about the future possibilities and the ability to make a significant impact on cardiovascular care.
"With Ascend, we have been able to optimize our data pipelines, reducing processing time and enabling us to deliver data products faster. It has accelerated our cycle time and positioned us for future growth and scalability."
