Download PDF
Apria Healthcare: Leveraging Accurate Forecasts for Competitive Healthcare Services
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Big Data Analytics
- Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Human Resources
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Demand Planning & Forecasting
- Inventory Management
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Testing & Certification
The Challenge
Apria Healthcare, a leading provider of home respiratory services and medical equipment in the United States, was looking to expand its high-quality care services into new markets. However, the company faced challenges in identifying cost centers due to its manual forecasting system. The company's spreadsheet-driven forecasting system made it difficult to understand the true cost of operations, which was crucial for a healthcare organization of their size. The company gathered a lot of data about the market for their specialist products, but the inconsistent and inaccurate data capturing and usage made it difficult to focus on the most promising opportunities. The company needed a solution that would help them understand their true operational costs, increase efficiencies, control costs, and build more competitive pricing models for their services.
About The Customer
Apria Healthcare is one of the leading providers of home respiratory services and related medical equipment in the United States. The company's services are used in areas such as oxygen therapy, inhalation therapies, sleep apnea treatment, and negative pressure wound therapy. Headquartered in Lake Forest, California, Apria owns and operates more than 400 locations throughout the United States and serves more than 1.2 million patients each year. The company aims to offer patients the highest-quality services at the best possible price and is constantly looking to grow the business and reach new customers.
The Solution
Apria Healthcare partnered with Aviana to replace its spreadsheet-driven forecasting system with a centralized, best-practice approach. The company decided to build a centralized approach to forecasting and selected IBM® Cognos® TM1® on Cloud as their enterprise-class solution. Working together with a team from IBM Premier Business Partner Aviana, Apria Healthcare built a secure budgeting and forecasting environment for its distribution business. By deploying the solution in the cloud, the finance team gained the flexibility to scale its analytics environment to meet immediate business needs, while reducing its dependence on internal IT support. The solution allowed the company to sidestep many of the traditional on-premises hardware issues and focus on developing a solution that would give their users exactly what they need.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Related Case Studies.
![](/files/casestudy/Hospital-Inventory-Management.png)
Case Study
Hospital Inventory Management
The hospital supply chain team is responsible for ensuring that the right medical supplies are readily available to clinicians when and where needed, and to do so in the most efficient manner possible. However, many of the systems and processes in use at the cancer center for supply chain management were not best suited to support these goals. Barcoding technology, a commonly used method for inventory management of medical supplies, is labor intensive, time consuming, does not provide real-time visibility into inventory levels and can be prone to error. Consequently, the lack of accurate and real-time visibility into inventory levels across multiple supply rooms in multiple hospital facilities creates additional inefficiency in the system causing over-ordering, hoarding, and wasted supplies. Other sources of waste and cost were also identified as candidates for improvement. Existing systems and processes did not provide adequate security for high-cost inventory within the hospital, which was another driver of cost. A lack of visibility into expiration dates for supplies resulted in supplies being wasted due to past expiry dates. Storage of supplies was also a key consideration given the location of the cancer center’s facilities in a dense urban setting, where space is always at a premium. In order to address the challenges outlined above, the hospital sought a solution that would provide real-time inventory information with high levels of accuracy, reduce the level of manual effort required and enable data driven decision making to ensure that the right supplies were readily available to clinicians in the right location at the right time.
![](/files/casestudy/Improving-Production-Line-Efficiency-with-Ethernet-Micro-RTU-Controller.png)
Case Study
Improving Production Line Efficiency with Ethernet Micro RTU Controller
Moxa was asked to provide a connectivity solution for one of the world's leading cosmetics companies. This multinational corporation, with retail presence in 130 countries, 23 global braches, and over 66,000 employees, sought to improve the efficiency of their production process by migrating from manual monitoring to an automatic productivity monitoring system. The production line was being monitored by ABB Real-TPI, a factory information system that offers data collection and analysis to improve plant efficiency. Due to software limitations, the customer needed an OPC server and a corresponding I/O solution to collect data from additional sensor devices for the Real-TPI system. The goal is to enable the factory information system to more thoroughly collect data from every corner of the production line. This will improve its ability to measure Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and translate into increased production efficiencies. System Requirements • Instant status updates while still consuming minimal bandwidth to relieve strain on limited factory networks • Interoperable with ABB Real-TPI • Small form factor appropriate for deployment where space is scarce • Remote software management and configuration to simplify operations
![](/files/casestudy/Gas-Pipeline-Monitoring-System-for-Hospitals.png)
Case Study
Gas Pipeline Monitoring System for Hospitals
This system integrator focuses on providing centralized gas pipeline monitoring systems for hospitals. The service they provide makes it possible for hospitals to reduce both maintenance and labor costs. Since hospitals may not have an existing network suitable for this type of system, GPRS communication provides an easy and ready-to-use solution for remote, distributed monitoring systems System Requirements - GPRS communication - Seamless connection with SCADA software - Simple, front-end control capability - Expandable I/O channels - Combine AI, DI, and DO channels
![](/files/casestudy/How-Sirqul’s-IoT-Platform-is-Crafting-Carrefour’s-New-In-Store-Experiences.png)
Case Study
How Sirqul’s IoT Platform is Crafting Carrefour’s New In-Store Experiences
Carrefour Taiwan’s goal is to be completely digital by end of 2018. Out-dated manual methods for analysis and assumptions limited Carrefour’s ability to change the customer experience and were void of real-time decision-making capabilities. Rather than relying solely on sales data, assumptions, and disparate systems, Carrefour Taiwan’s CEO led an initiative to find a connected IoT solution that could give the team the ability to make real-time changes and more informed decisions. Prior to implementing, Carrefour struggled to address their conversion rates and did not have the proper insights into the customer decision-making process nor how to make an immediate impact without losing customer confidence.