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OpenConnect Announces First Social Media Tracking Tool to Monitor Public Opinions on Healthcare
[May 12, 2010]

OpenConnect Announces First Social Media Tracking Tool to Monitor Public Opinions on Healthcare


DALLAS & AUSTIN, Texas --(Business Wire)--

Today, OpenConnect, an innovator in defining and improving process efficiency, and the Global Language Monitor (GLM), the media analytics company, announced the joint launch of the Healthcare NarrativeTracker Index™ (NTI™), the first product specifically designed to use social media-based monitoring to better understand the issues driving healthcare reform. Because the Healthcare NTI is based on the national discourse, it provides a real-time, accurate picture of what the public is saying about any topic related to healthcare, at any point in time. In addition to the NTI, the Narrative Tracker Arc™ follows the rise and fall of sub-stories within the main narrative to provide a comprehensive overview of the opinions surrounding a single issue.

The 'narrative' refers to the stream of public opinion captured by blogs and other social media outlets on the Internet. The rise of the narrative actually renders positions on the issues almost meaningless, since positions now matter less than how they fit into a particular narrative.

"Just as the OpenConnect Comprehend solution provides an unprecedented view into a company's workflows looking for process variations that drive inefficiency and waste, NTI tracks the 'narrative' of a subject, as well as projecting future trajectories for the narrative," said Edward ML Peters, CEO of OpenConnect. "The result has two advantages over traditional polls: 1) immediacy and 2) the lack of any bias that tends o creep into traditional polling, e.g., when individuals answer questions with what they think are the 'correct' answers rather than their true opinions. Most importantly, it allows policy and decision makers to focus on the true issues driving perceptions and concerns rather than being driven by false and phantom concepts. In addition, the Narrative Tracker Arc™ follows the rise and fall of sub-stories within the main narrative."



The NTI is based on the GLM's Predictive Quantities Indicator™ (PQI™). The PQI tracks the frequency of words and phrases in global print and electronic media on the Internet, throughout the Blogosphere and other social media outlets as well as accessing proprietary databases. The PQI is a weighted index that factors in long-term trends, short-term changes, momentum, and velocity.

"The goal of influencers, whether it's the media, advertisers or politicians, is to spin news so that it resonates best with their target audience," said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of GLM. "NTI is more effective in capturing the true opinion of the public because it tracks unfiltered keywords, rather than how that opinion is interpreted by the news media or by pollsters."


The Healthcare NTI will be released on a monthly basis beginning Thursday, May 13, 2010. The first analysis details the various narratives surrounding Massachusetts Healthcare reform, a healthcare model which has been adopted in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as the national healthcare reform bill.

About OpenConnect

OpenConnect business process discovery and analytics deliver event-driven intelligence to automatically discover workforce, process and customer variations that hinder operational efficiency. Armed with this information, executives can make the quick and incremental improvements that will increase process efficiency, improve employee productivity, reduce cost, and raise profitability. With a rich history of developing innovative technology, OpenConnect products are distributed in more than 60 countries and used by more than 60 percent of Fortune 100 companies. For more information on OpenConnect, visit www.oc.com.

About the Global Language Monitor

Austin-Texas-based Global Language Monitor analyzes and catalogues the latest trends in word usage and word choices, and their impact on the various aspects of culture, with a particular emphasis upon Global English.

Since 2003, GLM has launched a number of innovative products and services monitoring the Internet, the Blogosphere, Social Media as well as the Top 25,000 print and electronic media sites.


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