Chalem Systems Group: Success Stories: American Medical Network

American Medical Network
Database Smarts Help Identify Markets and Assess Competition

young, fast-growing company building a nationwide network of medical facilities needed a way to identify promising markets and learn about existing medical resources in local markets throughout the country. They had already found a premiere source for the comprehensive, up-to-date data their project required. Manipulating and presenting the data in ways that could allow their staff to be efficient in analysis and strategic in response was another story.

Specialized toolset that takes advantage of rich geographical data
Project delivered under tight budget and timeline
CSG-developed tools used to identify promising markets and assess competitors

In setting up their business model, the American Medical Network recognized that having the right data at their fingertips could make or break their business. They knew they had to have the right data, but they knew that they needed the right tools to make sense of the data. Healthcare makes up a seventh of the US economy, and is an enormous, complex, and rapidly-changing market; thus, the stakes were high.

When American Medical Network began to look at the types of tools that were on the market, they couldn't find the right fit. What they saw were general-purpose tools, designed to serve a broad range of healthcare-related data needs. American Medical Network wanted to look at a handful of specialties and types of facilities, and wanted to choose markets based also on such factors as population and differing state regulations. The data that they had purchased covered a large portion of the huge United States healthcare market and contained detailed survey responses on hundreds of topics. While all the information they needed was there, they found it difficult to extract just the items they needed. And because the information was spread across multiple databases, they found it difficult to quickly get a comprehensive view of the healthcare market in particular geographic areas.

Working within a tight budget and under the time pressure of a start-up business venture, Chalem Systems Group developed a custom Windows application using Microsoft Access. The application merges the data into a single database and allows the client to query and view it in a way that's tailored to the client's needs. The client is currently using the application to identify promising markets throughout the US and to assess their competitors. Planned future enhancements include a web-server-based application to allow business development specialists in the field to retrieve information from and add information to the database.