Patient satisfaction enhanced with BI

A newly released report, 'Business Intelligence in Healthcare: Have Providers Found a Cure?', found that organisations achieved a 15% increase in patient satisfaction scores through the use of BI and analytical tools, reports Market Watch.

This study collected data from nearly 100 healthcare providers and found that these organisations are increasingly deploying BI tools in the hospital to combat the challenges of rising health care costs and the pressing need to enhance patient care.

Prior research revealed that health care organisations have been hesitant to deploy analytical tools, lagging behind industry norms in both adoption and maturity of BI implementations.

Global retail banks are expected to spend $9 billion on BI technology by 2012, reports Albawaba.

Investments on operational risk technology poised to witness a 12% average annual increase from $754 million in 2007 to over $1 billion in 2010, according to independent market analyst Datamonitor, the report continued.

In the Middle East, financial institutions are also gaining strength in the technological front, as evidenced by the 15% increase in the sector's IT investment, which is set to reach $1.8 billion in 2008.

Singapore-based BI firm Cornerstone has expanded into Malaysia to address the growing BI market, reports Computer World.

Cornerstone says it will also be launching its R&D Centre-of-Excellence in Malaysia to lead the development of its Industry Analytic Solutions for Performance Management programme.

Cornerstone CEO Woon Shung Toon says that the company will double its Malaysian headcount to 30 professionals, comprising services (50%), R&D (33%), and sales (17%) by July.