LIVINGSTON, N.J., Sept. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- As families return from summer travels and children head back to school, Emergency Medical Associates (EMA) is preparing for a potential resurgence in the swine flu virus (H1N1) this fall. By using business intelligence (BI) solutions from SAP AG (NYSE:SAP), EMA will continue to pinpoint the movement of swine flu and alert federal organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as well as 21 different emergency medical departments to patterns of outbreak. In turn, hospitals will be able to staff according to swine flu trends and accommodate upticks in patient visits.

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EMA -- which provides emergency services to hospitals and health systems in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania -- originally selected data-visualization dashboards provided by Xcelsius software to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) related to its patients. During the swine flu outbreak in April 2009, the organization saw the potential for tracking influenza infection patterns among its emergency rooms, honing in on information such as the number of visits for the month versus past months; patient-walkout percentages; time of walk-in compared to time of admittance; and how long it took to treat and release or treat and admit a patient. Physicians, who are administrative directors in EMA's network of contracted emergency departments, had online access to this information in real time with reporting and analysis software from the SAP BusinessObjects(TM) portfolio, and used the data to respond quickly to changing public health conditions.

"By drilling down into specific syndromes in our patient reports, we can pinpoint spikes in fever and flu-like symptoms that are swine flu indicators," said Jonathan Rothman, director of Data Management, Emergency Medical Associates. "Then we compare it with our large archive of historical information to figure out where we stand. When statistics for a particular symptom exceed standard deviation, we know we've got a problem on our hands. From there, we do our due diligence to notify local, state and federal organizations like the CDC about swine flu growth patterns and any geographic spreading of the virus we're able to forecast, so that they can help inform the public. SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions enable us to do all of this quickly, and it's helped us save lives. By having the right amount of medical resources available to patients in the most urgent times, we can provide proper treatment and help mitigate the spreading of the virus."