Companies today are laser-focused on things like growing market share, ensuring customer satisfaction, increasing profit margins, enhancing product functionality, and maintaining customer retention. These are all important facets to running a successful business, and Decisions is no exception.

But sometimes you get the opportunity to be a part of something that transcends the aforementioned KPIs. Sometimes you get to take part in things like helping the underprivileged and homeless. Sometimes you can help those affected by cancer gain access to the right medical trials to get them the treatment they need. Sometimes it’s about more than money.

New York City’s Department of Social Services came to Decisions with several requirements they had for a rules engine to help them administer things like food stamp distribution, unemployment, and welfare. The Decisions platform is helping to ensure that a homeless family with children has access to a shelter that is set up to handle children and that a homeless person that takes a medication that needs to be refrigerated gets into a shelter that has a refrigerator available. The Decisions rules engine helps to make sure food stamps go to those who need them.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute, a cabinet-level federal agency, put the Decisions platform up against all of the major players in the Business Process Management space. In the end, they determined that the Decisions rules engine was the only one that could perform to their standards, and those standards are high. The National Cancer Institute is implementing Decisions into the “SuperMATCH” program to create an automated approach to matching patients with treatment options best suited for them. This program will collect patient information; things like patient age, disease treatment history, and specific genetic mutation, run this information against the Decisions rules engine, and then it will return a list of clinical trials and treatment options that are available to them. This helps narrow down the list of thousands of treatments and trials to a list of maybe only half a dozen, helping cancer patients get the most effective treatment they can. “SuperMATCH” is Phase I of the project. Phase 2 will involve the “Pediatric Match and NCI Match” program, which targets cancers in children. How rewarding is that?!

All in all, Decisions isn’t curing cancer, but we’re helping those afflicted with this terrible disease to identify the programs and treatment options best suited for them. We’re not solving for homelessness and poverty, but we are helping to align those that need it most with the resources that are available within a major metropolitan area. I’m not sure what the next big thing is going to be for Decisions, but I’m excited to find out. Will it be helping NASA in their mission to put a human on Mars? Or perhaps aiding the UN in their mission of international peace and security? Maybe, maybe not, but lofty goals like this definitely seem more likely given our recent accomplishments with NYC and NCI.

If you would like to learn more about how Decisions can help your company automate business processes, contact sales@decisions.com or request a demo.