MONTREAL, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SAND Technology, Inc.
(OTC Bulletin Board: SNDTF), an international provider of data management
software and best practices, announced today that the Sherbrooke University
Hospital Centre (CHUS) has successfully completed an upgrade of the server
used to run its clinical research data warehouse powered by SAND/DNA
Analytics(TM) data management software. SAND/DNA Analytics fully leverages the
increased processing power of the new platform, enabling CHUS to provide
medical researchers with greatly improved access to the clinical data they
require while substantially reducing total cost of ownership.
The server upgrade at CHUS involved migrating the clinical data warehouse
environment from a Compact Alpha ES40 OSF1 4-way 866 MHz CPU server with 16 GB
of RAM to a lower-cost Linux HP DL380 G5 with two 3.16 GHz Quad-core Xeon
processors and 32 GB of RAM. The resulting dramatic reduction in maintenance
costs and energy demands has significantly cut total cost of ownership for the
warehouse, while SAND/DNA Analytics' linear scalability has brought a
four-fold improvement in data load and query speeds. Migration of the data
warehouse to the new environment was completed in three days, requiring
minimal effort and involving no disruption in service.
The SAND/DNA Analytics environment used by clinical researchers at CHUS
holds 96 million test results and 450 million records of individual test
details spanning the last 18 years. Sensitive data is encrypted at the
database level, and user access to this data is restricted in compliance with
HIPAA regulations. Medical notes are automatically encoded in SNOMED
(Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine) notation using SAND's SNOMED Encoder
tool as the data is loaded into the data warehouse.
'In our organization, researchers require very rapid access to a large
volume of clinical data from their desktops,' said Hassan Diab, Senior System
Administrator for Decision Support Systems at CHUS's Clinical Research Center.
'SAND/DNA Analytics has clearly demonstrated its ability to make use of
increased memory and processing power in an economical and efficient way.
Furthermore, migrating the SAND/DNA environment to the new server was a simple
and transparent process that didn't require us to interrupt data warehouse
services to users.'
'We are pleased to be able to show that our SAND/DNA product suite can
scale linearly with increases in processing power,' said Serge Bonin, Senior
Solutions Architect for SAND Technology. 'This allows our clients to quickly
and easily take advantage of ongoing hardware improvements, without requiring
them to completely overhaul their data warehouse environment each time.'
About SAND Technology
SAND is an international provider of intelligent information management
software and best practices. The SAND/DNA product suite scales to help any
size enterprise cope with exploding data requirements, now and into the
future. SAND/DNA Access allows for retaining all potentially relevant data in
a tiny footprint while providing instant access to just what's required.
SAND/DNA Analytics allows for complex what-if analysis to meet any planned and
unplanned business need.
SAND/DNA solutions include CRM analytics, and specialized applications for
government, healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, retail,
transportation, and other business sectors. SAND/DNA has achieved 'Certified
for SAP NetWeaver' status and SAND Nearline Integration Controller has
achieved 'Powered by SAP NetWeaver' status.
SAND Technology has offices in the United States, Canada, the United
Kingdom and Central Europe.
About CHUS
Fourth largest hospital in the province of Quebec, the Sherbrooke
University Hospital Center (CHUS) is considered as local, regional, and
super-regional hospital. It provides health care services for the Eastern-
Township population and provides specialized health care in cardiology,
neurosurgery, oncology, and neonatology for the Centre-du-Quebec region and
parts of the Monteregie regions of the province.
SOURCE SAND Technology, Inc.
