Case Studies – Dovel Innovations

LIMS Implementation

admin — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 18:49:16 +0000

The Challenge

Labs within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) responsible for ongoing inspection of regulated products in the U.S. relied on a primarily paper-based process to record sample information and analysis information. This process varied across all of the labs and the FDA needed to standardize business processes to create a single, compliant, automated platform, the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS).

The Solution

Dovel leveraged significant subject matter expertise and domain depth to address the needs of both the LIMS business owners and end-users. Through Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions, the Dovel team collected information on all of the unique workflows and processes. We identified best practices and implemented them in the technology solution that is now being used. While the overarching objective was harmonization, site specific or process specific needs were accommodated through specific configurations or workflows within the system.

Client Results

The LIMS solution enabled FDA regulatory and scientific staff to improve their ability to identify, effectively analyze, and evaluate any and all products regulated by the FDA that require laboratory analysis within a common digital system.

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Cloud Migration and Modernization

admin — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 18:23:04 +0000

The Challenge

A legacy grants systems was hosted in Federal data centers that were costly, difficult to maintain, susceptible to frequent outages, and unable to keep pace with the rapid increase in users and services.

The Solution

Dovel analyzed the landscape options and then migrated 10 modules and their supporting infrastructure from antiquated government “server rooms” to a FedRAMP cloud provider. Today, that cloud environment hosts more than 50 different environments, 17 external interfaces, and 500 server instances. We also then began modernizing the legacy system to take full advantage of the cloud capabilities.

Client Results

This approach improved system availability to 99.97% and dramatically enhanced performance of the top 10 business functions by more than 500%. All of this was achieved without increasing the resources needed to manage the platform.

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Cloud Technology

admin — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 18:22:12 +0000

The Challenge

Our NIH client had a website that was hosted and maintained on a contractor server, which gave them little control over content, configuration and cost.

The Solution

We reviewed the website specifications and advised the client that the website could be moved to the Microsoft Azure Cloud. It would give the client control over their own website and increase reliability and scalability. The team created and configured the Azure infrastructure and conducted the migration while maintaining the required high availability of the website.

Client Results

This implementation successfully restored control of the website to the client and resulted in a six figure annual savings to the Institute.

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Benchmarking and Quality

admin — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 17:35:55 +0000

The Challenge

National hemovigilance in the United States was established in 2010 as a voluntary reporting system for hospital transfusion services through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Healthcare Safety Network Hemovigilance Module (NHSN). To provide support and feedback to hospitals, AABB established a Patient Safety Organization, AABB Center for Patient Safety (CPS), for hospitals reporting to NHSN to receive input on their hemovigilance and patient safety reports. U.S. Patient Safety Rules and regulations established by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) requires AABB’s CPS to provide direct feedback and assistance to healthcare providers to minimize patient risk and to promote a culture of safety.

The Solution

AABB engaged Dovel to develop an IT solution that provides CPS member hospitals the ability to access, submit, interact with, and consume confidential and protected hemovigilance data and reports. The secure and interactive CPS web portal was launched in 2015 for use by the 85+ AABB CPS member hospitals. The cloud-based portal has multiple interactive capabilities, including collection of supplemental information linked to transfusion reaction reports, delivery of confidential and protected comparative benchmark reports using data from the CDC NHSN addressing adverse transfusion reactions and patient safety events, notification of upcoming events, and provision of targeted educational material.

Client Results

A national hemovigilance system that relies on voluntary reporting may be challenged for consistent hospital participation. Through the delivery of valuable metrics and resources, the AABB CPS incentivizes hospital members to participate. The secure web portal provides the enhanced and timely feedback needed to encourage consistent participation and accurate reporting. Additionally, the portal has drastically reduced the time required to generate the quarterly benchmark reports thus improving the value add for participating hospital members.

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Machine Learning

admin — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 17:34:24 +0000

The Challenge

Federal grant program managers are faced with reduced staff and increased reporting and oversight responsibilities to ensure the highest return on Federal grant investments. They need capabilities to do more with less.

The Solution

In 2017, Dovel piloted the use of Machine Learning tools to improve the efficiencies of grants processes and provide greater insight into the risks associated with program delivery.

Client Results

By unifying data from government systems and the public domain, we provided capabilities that help grantors eliminate or significantly reduce time spent on administrative tasks and increase the focus on activities that deliver the greatest value to the grants mission. While these tools are still maturing, they hold the promise to transform the way that Federal grants are awarded and managed in the years ahead.

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Taxonomy

admin — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 17:32:53 +0000

The Challenge

Interoperability between disparate systems is a challenge in any field that deals with lots of data. Despite systems that are technically interoperable, integration or communication among these systems often fail because they are not speaking the same language.

The Solution

Dovel helps systems speak to one another, through the use of our terminology services, to include controlled terminologies and ontologies. Our experience has shown that terminology provides a semantics layer to systems that can connect disparate data for more accurate aggregation of data, error reduction in data retrieval, and desired interoperability. We have a proven process for creating tools that can be used in a semantic infrastructure.

Client Results

The solution includes more than just standardization of terms. We start with a concept that has a unique meaning and then determine synonyms that are vital to data aggregation and retrieval. We create relationships between concepts to show real world connections and we create definitions that clearly state the meaning of a concept. Utilizing standard terminology provides a consistent vocabulary, a shared vernacular, and a common lexicon that facilitates interoperability. Currently we support systems housing over two million concepts.

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High Performance and Grid Computing

admin — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 17:25:29 +0000

The Challenge

Our client had the need to store and use very large data sets. They were looking for a way to balance load and give fast, yet effective, access to data.

The Solution

The Dovel team provided an overall assessment of the current state of NIH-wide High Performance Computing (HPC) capabilities, in order to understand the feasibility of the use of a grid computing strategy for use with scientific computational needs.

Client Results

This assessment included the constraints, barriers, risks, and recommended next steps necessary to implement an NIH Bioinformatics Grid within the next few years.

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Cybersecurity

admin — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 15:00:55 +0000

The Challenge

The OPM data breach in 2015 created new Federal requirements around systems security, specifically Two Factor Authentication (2FA), where systems would be need to have users login not only with their passwords, but also with a pin code delivered on-demand to their mobile phone.

The Solution

Dovel built this capability for GrantSolutions using an open-source industry standard and delivered it quickly (developed and deployed in just two weeks), enabling users to easily login to the platform using their mobile phones. This 2FA functionality was then made freely available to other agencies throughout government and was adopted by the Department of Education.

Client Results

The solution’s simplicity (developed and deployed in two weeks) and effectiveness earned it recognition as part of the Government Computer News Discovery and Innovation in Government IT awards (GCN DigIT) in the Cybersecurity category.

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Transition to Agile Development Methodology

admin — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 14:57:06 +0000

The Challenge

A product release for one of Dovel’s federal government customers could take up to six months to develop and deploy. The interval was long enough that customer requirements sometimes changed before deployment could even take place. The customer was frustrated at having to wait so long for features that it wanted to use immediately. An Agile methodology would clearly resolve the problem at hand but meant a sharp methodological and cultural change for the customer. The Agile methodology also needed to be compatible with federal government customer’s methodology, which was based on waterfall processes, and meet the demand for transparency, accountability, and traceability emphasized by the government to create comprehensive lifecycle documentation as a IT system requirement and best practice.

The Solution

Dovel addressed this dilemma by initiating a gradual transition to Agile methodology. This began with adapting Agile terminology to the waterfall setting. Changing the language was relatively simple but Dovel also needed to show that both the new Agile practices and documentation was in compliance with the FDA’s EPLC 2.0 and also met all the required milestones leading to a release. Dovel mapped all new deliverables to those in the customer’s official software development lifecycle and showed how all traditional milestone goals were still being met by the new process. Finally, the team had to show that the new process still delivered functionality as good as – or better than – waterfall had.

Client Results

After implementing Agile, a release could be deployed to production in less than 45 days. This slashed the time to market by four months for five federal user communities. Dovel’s approach also supported a more flexible delivery of functionality and provided lifecycle documentation. This helped to realize critical time saving benefits as well as higher quality results. As a result of the method’s success, the federal customer adopted Dovel’s Agile development methodology as the basis for its own first-ever official Agile software delivery model. Dovel’s Agile process is currently used by many government centers and offices and is often sought after to address Information Technology changes. Dovel has continued to refine its own Agile methodology and uses it as the standard delivery model for many of its government contracts.

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