Identity Resolution Daily

By Mike Betron, Infoglide Software Director of Marketing

We talked a week ago about the rapidly emerging market space called Big Data. One statistic that opened my eyes is Gartner’s prediction that the volume of new data generated by enterprises will grow by 650% in the next five years, and 80% of that will be unstructured data!

The 451Group’s definition of Big Data describes a growing need for non-traditional processes that can treat massive amounts of data as a whole, thereby making it impossible to use many traditional tools and techniques. Data is voluminous, complex, and very dynamic, yet business drivers demand that it be captured, managed, and harnessed to benefit the organization.

While entity resolution (ER) software is technologically mature, the evolving requirements for managing Big Data fit ER perfectly. For example, Infoglide’s Identity Resolution Engine (IRE) scales to meet Big Data requirements, and together with its flexibility in handling ambiguous unstructured and structured data with missing elements makes it an ideal solution for wringing value from the “data deluge” we increasingly find ourselves in.

One of the unique problems associated with Big Data is its multiple disparate sources that include email, Word documents, spreadsheets, and social media such as IM, newsfeeds, Facebook, and LinkedIn, just to name a few. Again, entity resolution systems like IRE now include support for multiple data forms and have created special ways to incorporate social media.

So, while Big Data presents a daunting challenge for many organizations, flexible technologies like entity resolution represent a key element of any solution.

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By the Infoglide Software Team

American Medical Software: Electronic Medical Records Use Over Majority

“Results from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) show that between 2009 and 2010, the percentage of physicians reporting having an electronic medical record/electronic health record (EMR/EHR) system that meets the criteria of a basic system increased by 14% and a fully functional system increased by 46%.”

avanade: Global Survey: The Impact of Big Data

“In the global marketplace, businesses, suppliers and customers are creating and consuming vast amounts of information. Gartner predicts that enterprise data in all forms will grow 650 percent over the next five years. According to IDC, the world’s volume of data doubles every 18 months. This flood of data, often referred to as “information overload,” “data deluge” and “big data,” clearly creates a challenge for business leaders.”

Gartner: Technology Trends You Can’t Afford to Ignore

1. Virtualization
2. Data Deluge
3. Energy and Green IT
4. Complex Resource Tracking
5. Consumerization and Social Software
6. Unified Communications
7. Mobile and Wireless
8. System Density
9. Mashups and Portals
10. Cloud Computing

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[Post from Infoglide] Big Data and Entity Resolution

“Early this year, Gartner suggested that a ‘data deluge’ has begun. In his recent Dataspora Blog post about ‘Big Data’ and what it means, author Michael Driscoll presents a unique and interesting perspective on the massive amounts of data being generated and stored. According to The 451 Group’s definition…”

Mastering Data Management: Entity Resolution & MDM: Interchangeable?

“Gartner released a report in November entitled, ‘Top 10 Technology Trends Impacting Information Infrastructure, 2011.’ Two of the top ten trends were ‘Entity Resolution and Analysis’ and ‘Master Data Management.’”

KeysNet.com: Keys whistleblowers awarded $88 Million

“According to Taxpayers Against Fraud, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C., National Medical then launched a campaign to force Ven-A-Care out of business. But in fighting back, Ven-A-Care staff discovered National Medical was paying kickbacks to doctors who prescribed medicines and services that weren’t needed, then billing Medicare and Medicaid exorbitant sums far in excess of what the medicines and services cost. The Justice Department eventually got a $486 million settlement from National Medical — and Ven-A-Care received $40 million as its reward under the False Claims Act.”

Yahoo News: Russian Banks Report $3.8 Trillion in Suspicious Transactions This Year

“Russian financial institutions reported 120 trillion roubles (2.44 trillion pounds) of suspicious transactions to the anti-money laundering watchdog in the first nine months of 2010, the Kommersant daily reported on Monday.”

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By Mike Betron, Infoglide Software Director of Marketing

Early this year, Gartner suggested that a “data deluge” has begun. In his recent Dataspora Blog post about “Big Data” and what it means, author Michael Driscoll presents a unique and interesting perspective on the massive amounts of data being generated and stored. According to The 451 Group’s definition,

“Big data is a term applied to data sets that are large, complex and dynamic (or a combination thereof) and for which there is a requirement to capture, manage and process the data set in its entirety, such that it is not possible to process the data using traditional software tools and analytic techniques within tolerable time frames.”

While the term “Big Data” continues to evolve, no one argues that there are unique problems associated with capturing and using it, and part of the challenge derives from the multiple disparate sources of data.

Source: Avanade Global Survey: The Business Impact of Big Data, November 2010

In trying to get a handle on the issue’s impact, Avanade published in November the results of an August “survey of 543 C-level executives and IT decision-makers in 17 countries”. Some of the more interesting findings are:

• The “data deluge” is real and is a source of frustration to many business and government leaders.
• A majority believe that the data deluge “fundamentally changes the way their businesses operate.”
• 46 percent of companies report they have made an inaccurate business decision as a result of bad or outdated data.

Highly scalable entity resolution technology will play a key role in solving the Big Data problem. We’ll talk more about this in a later post.

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By the Infoglide Software Team

ZDNet: Big Data for the year ahead: 10 predictions

“The era of Big Data has only just begun.  In the latest edition of Database Trends & Applications, I provided a series of predictions about the year ahead, with an emphasis on data management. Here are 10 of them…”

InfoWorld: The spectacular rise of SaaS

“The segment of the cloud Salesforce leads, SaaS (software as a service), has grown from a tiny sliver of the enterprise software market just a few years ago to 10 percent in 2009, according to Gartner, which predicts that slice will expand to 16 percent by 2014. Even more dramatic is the firm’s projection that 85 percent of all new software will be delivered as a service by 2010.”

The Huffington Post: Don’t Repeat the UK’s Electronic Health Records Failure

“In 2005 the United Kingdom embarked on the largest investment ($18 billion) in health information technology in the world. Yet despite expectations that the system would increase efficiency and reduce medical errors, their efforts neither improved health nor saved money — in fact in some cases, they may have led to patient harm. Britain’s government-run medical system is obviously different from our complex public-private insurance system.”

CNN.com: Aviation security: Where do we stand?

“‘This is where Secure Flight, the government-run program that is now vetting passengers before they receive their boarding passes, comes in. It replaces a more ad hoc system run by the carriers. ‘Prior to Secure Flight, the airlines themselves were responsible for matching all of their passengers against the watch lists, so each airline had their own system for doing that,’ said Greg Soule, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration. ‘Secure Flight takes the passenger watch list matching process away from the airlines and puts it all in one program under TSA, so it is a more consistent process across the board.’”

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By the Infoglide Team

Main Justice:Eric Holder’s Prepared Remarks at Health Care Fraud Prevention Summit

“In just the last fiscal year, we obtained settlements and judgments of more than $2.5 billion in False Claims Act matters alleging health care fraud. This marked a new record – and an increase of more than 60 percent from fiscal year 2009. We also opened more than 2,000 new criminal and civil health-care fraud investigations, reached an all-time high in the number of health-care fraud defendants charged, stopped numerous large-scale fraud schemes in their tracks, and returned more than $2.5 billion to the Medicare Trust Fund and more than $800 million to cash-strapped state Medicaid programs.”

SearchDataManagement.com: Gartner Magic Quadrant ranks MDM software vendors

“Gartner reports that due to the sluggish economy, customer demand for MDM software is growing at a significantly slower rate than years past. But it is growing. The analyst firm predicts that the overall market for MDM software will increase from $1 billion in 2008 to $2.9 billion by 2013. Gartner also predicts that by 2010, investments in MDM software will lead to an 80% reduction in costs associated with managing redundant data.”

The Crime Report: Fusion Centers Could Face Budget Issues As States Cut Back

“Some of the nation’s 72 fusion centers–where federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies share data on terrorism and crime threats–may face budget problems in the nation’s tough economic conditions. Ross Ashley of the National Fusion Center Association, which represents the centers, says that some newly elected governors must be convinced of the centers’ worth. The agencies typically do not have line-item budgets and are dependent on allocations from various levels of government to operate.”

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By Mike Betron, Infoglide Software Director of Marketing

Infoglide Software is a proud sponsor of the 15th International Conference on Information Quality (ICIQ). The 2010 edition of this annual event is being hosted this weekend by the George W. Dohaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Researchers from all over the world will convene to share the results of their efforts.

The organizer of the event is John Talburt, PhD, founder and director of the Center for Advanced Research in Entity Resolution and Information Quality (ERIQ). Infoglide has sponsored the ERIQ lab and the Information Quality graduate program in recent years.

If you’re attending, we’ll be there and look forward to meeting you in Little Rock.

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By the Infoglide Team

Hays Daily News: Making the move to electronic records a natural fit for clinic

“Beginning in 2015, providers who have not successfully demonstrated meaningful use will face cuts in the amount of Medicare reimbursement they receive. It will begin with 99-percent payment in 2015, and drop to 97 percent by 2017, according to information from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. ‘So if your practice has not implemented an EHR and have meaningful use, you’re going to get reimbursed less dollars for the same service as someone who does,’ Brull said.”

GIGaom: Jeff Jonas Video on How Data Makes Corporations Dumb

“‘Information is being created faster than organizations can make sense of it,’ he says. The gap between the growth of information and understanding is widening because the tools for understanding are not scaling as fast as the growth in data and information.  ‘As computers are getting faster and the world is getting more sensors, the organizations have been getting dumber,’ he said. ‘The percentage of what is knowable is on a decline.’”

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By the Infoglide Team

The Miami Herald: Medicare’s fraud hot line begins to root out billing scams

“By September, Feliberto Ramos was arrested on fraud charges accusing him and his company, Miracle Group Rehabilitation Center, of falsely billing the federal healthcare program $3.1 million over just three months. Medicare paid Ramos $1.9 million for rehab services never provided to angry beneficiaries.”

OCDQ:Data, data everywhere, but where is data quality?

“Data matters because everything—and not just the rows in our relational databases and spreadsheets, but also our status updates from Facebook and Twitter, our blog posts, and even most of our daily conversations—is data. The growing challenge is can we extract meaningful insights from these vast and veritable oceans of unrelenting data volumes, and use those insights to make better decisions in near real-time in order to positively impact the various aspects of our lives.”

eBusiness Tweets: Microsoft entering the electronic medical record (EMR) software market

“You would think Microsoft would be in such a promising industry, but you won’t find a Microsoft EHR available. The primary reason why is that EHRs are highly specialized, and Microsoft’s main products (Dynamics, CRM, and SharePoint) don’t come anywhere near the needs of physician practices. It would be very difficult for Microsoft to build an EHR from scratch and introduce it to the market. so what should Microsoft do to enter the industry? Acquire a current player.”

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By the Infoglide Team

Liliendahl on Data Quality: What is a best-in-class match engine?

“I don’t think anyone knows what product is the best match engine, because I don’t think that all match engines have been benchmarked with a representative set of data.”

ITBusinessEdge: SOA Spending on the Rise. Surprised? Here’s Why

“It’s important to realize that SOA is really a rather loose collection of best practices. It’s not necessarily a well-defined list where you have some checklist of things to do SOA and if you miss one, you’re not doing SOA. What’s happening is architecture teams are incorporating SOA best practices into various other initiatives.”

BTNonline.com: TSA To Assume All Watchlist Matching For U.S. Carriers By June, All Carriers By January

“The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is on track to assume watchlist matching from all U.S. carriers by the end of May, only slightly behind its March 31 U.S. implementation target for the Secure Flight passenger prescreening system, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report. The Secure Flight program also calls for TSA to assume watchlist matching from foreign carriers, and the agency already is working with 19 airlines outside the United States to do so. Five of those carriers are fully functional within the program, and an additional 14 are testing, GAO reported.”

[video] KENS5.com: UT Health Science Center helps bring medicine into computer age

“Currently 80 to 90 percent of all medical records are stored on paper.  The goal is that have an electronic health record for everyone in the U.S. by 2014. Electronic health records are expected to greatly reduce the number of medical errors, which is significant.  Each year in the United States, as many as 100,000 people die in hospitals because of such errors.  That’s the equivalent of one major airline crash every single day of every single year.”

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