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IBM > Case Studies > Blue Shield of California: Enhancing Healthcare Services through IoT
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Blue Shield of California: Enhancing Healthcare Services through IoT

Technology Category
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Applicable Industries
  • Cement
  • Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions
  • Product Research & Development
Use Cases
  • Inventory Management
  • Time Sensitive Networking
Services
  • System Integration
The Challenge
Blue Shield of California, a not-for-profit health plan provider, was facing an increasingly competitive health insurance marketplace following the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The company needed to better support its members and boost competitiveness by accelerating the provisioning of new systems and improving IT agility to get new offerings to market quickly. The challenge was to adjust their offerings as the needs of their members changed, and to deliver a modern customer experience, including access from mobile devices and tablets. The company was also struggling with a lack of automation in provisioning the networking, hardware, and software.
About The Customer
Blue Shield of California is an independent member of the Blue Shield Association, founded in 1939. It is a not-for-profit health plan provider dedicated to providing approximately 3 million Californians with access to high-quality healthcare at an affordable price. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the company found itself in an increasingly competitive health insurance marketplace. To stay competitive, it needed to continually adjust its offerings to meet the changing needs of its members and deliver a modern customer experience.
The Solution
Blue Shield of California adopted an open and cloud-ready platform for the deployment and management of application workloads provided by IBM® PureApplication® System. The company worked with IBM Business Partner Perficient, a systems integrator with extensive healthcare experience, to deliver faster speed to market. The IBM PureApplication System, with its repeatable patterns and cloud delivery, sped up deployment on a naturally scalable platform. This allowed Blue Shield to automate almost the entire build, enabling developers to easily access new technologies and leverage repeatable best practices. The use of patterns provided agility and consistency, allowing IT to spend less time on provisioning and more on strategic initiatives.
Operational Impact
  • The adoption of the IBM PureApplication System has allowed Blue Shield of California to simplify management with automation, spend more time on innovation, and accelerate deployments. The use of patterns has given the company agility and consistency, enabling IT to focus less on provisioning and more on strategic initiatives. The scalable cloud-based solution has also enabled the quick delivery of new technologies. The company can now change its patterns on the fly and easily deploy those patterns across the entire platform, taking advantage of automation to focus on innovation.
Quantitative Benefit
  • Accelerated deployments from weeks to a matter of hours
  • Provisioning a simple portal environment reduced from 2-4 weeks to 2-3 hours
  • One resource managing the entire platform, leading to immediate cost savings and long-term efficiency

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