SQA Visual Claim - More information
Visual Claim is an Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) ANSI 837 and RIMS ECSIF Claims Test Data Management System, built upon Microsoft .NET technologies.
In today's fast paced world, EDI communications are the norm for high volume business to business transactions, especially in the insurance sector. A major component of any insurance companies business is processing claims. In order to communicate claims data with their business partners and third-party clearing houses, insurance companies rely upon a number of standard claims processing formats (837, ECSIF), as well as proprietary formats still used by legacy systems, and/or acquired through acquisition of other providers. This data is far from human readable, and a single data exchange can contain tens of thousands of claims, each with multiple records, all of varying length and content. This poses monumental test data management challenges to Quality Assurance (QA) professionals, whose job it is to test claims processing engines and other relative applications. Well, SQA has the answer!
Introducing Visual Claim!
Visual Claim is a multi-tiered application built upon Microsoft .NET Technologies. Visual Claim has a three-tiered architecture; the front-end is built upon Microsoft Office Technologies and supports Microsoft Excel, Access, and/or Microsoft InfoPath. The middle-tier is built upon Microsoft .NET Webservices, and the back-end is built upon Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and makes extensive use of its XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and XQuery capabilities, as well as its more traditional relational capabilities. In fact, Visual Claim uses XML (eXtensible Markup Language) across all tiers, and uses XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) to convert between file formats. That's right, with Visual Claim you can convert between 837 and ECSIF formats, transform a claim from one inbound or outbound version to another, as if one of your trading partners modified it, and a whole lot more. Here is a brief list of some of Visual Claims features:
- Using the Visual Claim Load Facility, create a data store of Production claims to be searched or mined for testing purposes. This way, QA personnel or Subject Matter Experts (SME) do not have to create claims from scratch.
- Because Visual Claim uses XML and XSLT, you can quickly create file mappings to support non-standard, propriety formats beyond ANSI 837 and RIMS ECSIF.
- Convert between ANSI 837 and RIMS ECSIF Format, and/or any other proprietary formats that you wish to add to the system. You can even simulate processing by one of your trading partners by converting an inbound file to its outbound equivalent.
- View, edit, or create claims in any of the standard or custom formats you add to the system.
- Not only can you search claims loaded through the Visual Claim Load Facility, but you can also read in claims from a single stand-alone file, select which claims you wish to keep, view them, edit them, and write out a new file.
- Because of Visual Claim's three-tiered architecture and its use of .NET Webservices (which are public and fully documented), all of the features discussed above can be leveraged by any other front-end of your choice, including thick or thin clients. Even better, you can build Visual Claim into your automated testing strategy for functional/regression testing; editing, converting, and manipulating claims data dynamically on the fly!
This is just a short-list of some of the main features of Visual Claim. Visual Claim is scheduled for general release in January of 2008, so please stay tuned!
All dates and features listed above are subject to change.