The single screen holds health care provider claims information, the call center notes and other key data, he said. The combined system helps the insurer negotiate rates with health care providers, he added.

The tool also allows BlueCross "to pull comments about a provider and derive structured data from it," Brooks said. "Then we [can] analyze what kind of customer service calls people are taking, using our Cognos business intelligence tools. For the first time, we were able to analyze the service call patterns related to providers."

The tool also enables the insurance company to crawl external Web sites to find relevant data about health care providers, such as plans to build new facilities, Brooks said.

The company expects to begin using the tool in production next month, according to Brooks.

WebSphere Content Discovery for BI also provides users with ad hoc access to underlying BI data they can search without having to create a report, Andrews said. It also uses natural-language query-processing technology to interpret user needs based on a request for information, he said.