The client, a large Ontario government-funded Healthcare organization recognized the value of having high quality data , supported by mature data practices. 

Business problem and key objectives

The client had organically grown through merger of smaller agencies into a much larger agency. As a result of this history, the data systems lacked consistencies in architecture, approach, and meta-data. 

There was rampant data duplication throughout the organization as business units found it easier to copy the data for the purpose of ETL. 

Without a lack of a centralized metadata management platform, data consumers were forced to rely on “tribal knowledge” to  determine applicability of data-sets. 

With multiple data repositories co-existing in the organization, the data consumers were not always certain if they were utilizing a golden data source. 

The data architecture and strategy was meant to establish an inventory of architectures being followed by data systems. 

 

Approach & Outcome

In the current state architecture phase, Our team used TOGAF principles to define enterprise Architecture Building Blocks (ABB) which formed the basis of the architecture library. 

70+ data-producing systems were decomposed into its constituent sub-components and ABBs to define a consistent blueprint. 

The information model comprising of key entities (e.g. Patient, Provider, Payer, Drug etc.) was defined to capture the organization’s information framework. 

Team conducted interviews of 20+ stakeholders to understand the organization’s strategic priorities and mandate. 

Working along-side the client’s technical stakeholders, the team defined a target future state which included mature data management practices

 

Impact & Benefit

Through the exercise, the customer’s stakeholders were able to gain a better understanding of its current technology stack and used this background to inform their ideal future state. 

Information Model has now become a centre-piece of the organization’s data landscape and is actively updated with new requirements.