Clalit Health Services' goal is to deliver superior healthcare services through continuous improvement and innovation.

The global pandemic put a strain unlike anything before on all medical services. Clalit operated more than 100 information systems with a wide range of technologies and multidisciplinary operations—and needed to interconnect them to better manage patient data.

Additionally, during the pandemic, hospitals had to ensure that medical data was available to professionals, patients, and the Ministry of Health at all times. By providing its data in real time, Clalit's hospitals would be able to quickly isolate affected patients and prevent the spread of the virus. Real-time data would also support doctors in administering appropriate treatments immediately, which would shorten recovery, reduce hospital readmissions, and improve hospital efficiency.

Clalit Health Services turned to the Yael Group, a TIBCO Global Strategic Partner, to initiate its data transformation. The first priority was a reliable and secure Connected Intelligence platform to enable data integration. Using TIBCO solutions, Clalit built a technology platform that could integrate systems and analyze data centrally, allowing data to be extracted automatically whenever and wherever needed.

As the heartbeat of its organization, the central integration system easily harmonizes data among systems. The new platform can deal with massive loads of data transfers online, which proved to be critical during the pandemic. As COVID-19 policies and operations changed daily, the IT team could integrate new versions of its systems to accommodate these fast-changing demands.

According to Liora Shechter, VP of digital and technology, “Placing integration at the center of the architecture was the success factor that allowed us to move fast and provide great solutions. TIBCO, in collaboration with Yael Group, was the driving force for our success."

Thanks to new real-time data access, Clalit was well prepared to receive COVID patients. It opened 30 COVID-19 wards, admitted 10,000 patients, treated an additional 400,000, and administered three million COVID-19 tests and five million inoculations. Staff set up and fully equipped special COVID departments. Data was readily available across all systems, and decision-makers had real-time status on the number of cases, hospitalized patients, severe cases, and more.

According to Keren Filler, head of Clalit’s Development Division IT, “The outstanding way we handled the COVID pandemic in Israel is testimony to the high technological levels of our organization. Our IT employees are diligent, highly motivated, and excel in their work output. They are exceptional and available 24/7 to deal with the ever-changing demands in our healthcare system; therefore, we can offer the highest healthcare services to our members."

With its new data foundation, Clalit successfully accelerated COVID-19 lab testing by 25 percent using a highly effective algorithm developed by an Israeli team. Its real-time data solution erased bottlenecks, allowed for more testing with the same resources, and made the right decisions exactly when needed.

These improvements were essential during the first phases of the vaccine rollout. Its new real-time data platform allowed it to easily manage patient appointments, notifications, lab results, and government reporting. Patient waiting time—from the moment a test was requested until it was approved in the system—was reduced from 30 minutes to a few seconds.