Microsoft Customer Solution
Healthcare Industry Case Study
Business Process Management Solution Reduces
Manual Effort by 4,500 Hours per Month
Customer: Biomedical Systems
Website: www.biomedsys.com
Customer Size: 450 employees
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Healthcare providers
Partner: Byrne Software Technologies
Partner Website: www.byrnesoftware.com
Customer Profile
St. Louis, Missouri–based Biomedical
Systems provides equipment and services
for clinical trials, outsourced cardiac testing,
and clinical products and supplies.
Software and Services
 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Windows Server 2008 R2
− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
 Microsoft Visual Studio
− Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Professional
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“Our eStore solution, while transformational on its own,
is merely a first step in standardizing on Microsoft
software to help fuel and support business growth.”
Mike Brown, Executive Director, Software Development, Biomedical Systems
At Biomedical Systems, processing each of the 10,000
electrocardiograms (ECGs) it receives each month required at
least one hour of labor, with average turnaround times of two
days. The company used Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 to
streamline and automate ECG processing, which will lead to
faster turnaround times, increased quality, reduced effort and
costs, and a greater competitive advantage.
Business Needs
Founded in 1975, Biomedical Systems
operates three lines of business:
equipment and services to support clinical
trials, outsourced cardiac testing, and
clinical products and supplies. Within its
clinical trials business, which includes
several areas of focus, the Cardiac Safety
division alone supports some 200 active
clinical trials for drug and medical device
manufacturers at any given time,
processing roughly 10,000
electrocardiograms (ECGs) per month.
Previously, processing each ECG was timeand labor-intensive, involving five to six
handoffs and a greater number of standalone systems. ECGs came in through one
of four systems or on paper. In either case,
a paper folder was created and used to
drive the rest of the process, which
involved: manual data validation and
screening for immediate medical issues
using one system; review by a cardiac
technician using another system; twicedaily deliveries of folders to local
cardiologists; retrieval of cardiologists’
handwritten notes; transcription of the
notes into another system; and independent review for transcription errors using
yet another system.
Processing each ECG required at least one
hour of labor, with average turnaround
times of two days before the results were
ready for a study’s sponsor. Supporting
the process also placed a heavy burden on
the company’s IT team, which spent 400
hours per week supporting all the different
systems and creating customized
databases for each new trial.
“From a labor perspective, lack of an optimized solution prevented us from costeffectively scaling our capacity,” says Mike
Brown, Executive Director of Software
Development at Biomedical Systems. “From
a clinical perspective, it limited our ability to
meet the quality levels and turnaround
times demanded by clients. IT resources
couldn’t focus on other, more strategic
initiatives. All of these issues restricted
profitability and business growth in one way
or another.”
Solution
To meet its needs, Biomedical Systems set
out to build a single, integrated solution for
ECG acquisition and processing. The
company chose Microsoft SharePoint Server
2010 running on the Windows Server 2008
R2 operating system as the foundation for
its new solution and chose Process360 for
SharePoint from OpenText for business
process management on SharePoint Server.
Biomedical Systems selected Microsoft
Partner Network member Byrne Software
Technologies to implement the solution
using the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Professional development system.
limited to handling exceptions, which will
leave clinical trial teams with more time to
address the upstream causes of those
errors. And because eStore is highly
configurable, developer effort won’t be
required for each new study.”
Biomedical Systems expects to realize
several benefits from its new eStore
solution, including:

Faster turnaround times and
increased quality. Biomedical Systems
will reduce average turnaround times by
at least 50 percent. “We’ll be able to
guarantee one-day turnaround times—
half the industry average,” says Brown.
“And if a significant medical event
occurs, we’ll be able to evaluate an ECG
within 30 minutes. A single source of the
truth will also help us increase data
quality, better measure cardiologist
variability, and improve on other key
measures of customer satisfaction.”

Increased productivity. ECGs without
data errors will be processed in minutes
of manual effort, versus at least an hour.
Given that roughly half of all ECGs that
Biomedical Systems receives today fall
into this category, the eStore solution
will result in a monthly labor savings of
4,500 hours—equivalent to $180,000 in
monthly labor costs—that can be
redirected elsewhere. Technical effort
required to support the old method of
processing will also be reduced,
resulting in a weekly IT labor savings of
240 hours by the time all legacy systems
are retired.

Reduced costs. Storage and paper costs
associated with the maintenance of
physical folders will be eliminated,
resulting in an annual savings of at least
another $180,000 per year.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published April 2012
Increased competitive advantage.
Documented, guaranteed turnaround
times and improved clinical quality will
help Biomedical Systems win new
business. Just as important, the
company can now cost-effectively scale
to handle that business, without a
commensurate increase in labor costs.

Rapid, cost-effective development.
Biomedical Systems was able to quickly
and cost-effectively build eStore and
begin benefiting from it. “Microsoft
software gave us a comprehensive
platform for all aspects of solution
development,” says Brown. “For a
solution that will help us fundamentally
transform the business, the costs were
entirely reasonable. We expect to realize
a full return on our investment in less
than 24 months and an annual savings
of about $2.4 million per year after all
work is transitioned to eStore.”
Benefits
Called eStore, the company’s new solution
took seven months to develop and test, and
it is now in a formal validation phase. When
put into production in July 2012, it will use
data-driven workflows to dramatically
reduce the time, effort, and potential for
error in processing and analyzing ECGs. It
will also automate communication with
clinical trial sites, cardiologists, and study
sponsors, to further increase efficiencies
and reduce turnaround times.
“ECGs that pass automated, upfront error
checks will be made available to
cardiologists via the web within minutes,”
says Brown. “After the cardiologist evaluates
an ECG, results will be ready for sponsors a
few minutes later. Manual effort will be

Although all the above benefits are
significant on their own, Brown admits a
larger motivation for choosing the
technology path Biomedical Systems is on
today. “When I joined the company in
2009, it was apparent that we needed a
single, integrated technology stack across
the business,” he says. “We’ve since signed
a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement and are
using it to expand our rollout of
SharePoint Server 2010 and other eStore
solution components to other areas of the
business. We’re also using it to deploy
additional products such as Microsoft Lync
Server 2010 for unified communications
and Microsoft Visual Studio Team
Foundation Server 2010 for application
lifecycle management. Our eStore solution,
while transformational on its own, is
merely a first step in standardizing on
Microsoft software to help fuel and
support business growth.”