Please let this be an accessible (read: affordable) alternative to Spotfire and Tableau. I can glean from one of the small screenshots it's similar software.

How about a video demo? I sense it's a cool product, but if the only way to get a demo is via your rep, chances are it costs too much for me.

We are definitely a good alternative to Spotfire and/or Tableau, and we offer competitive pricing depending on your situation. If you think you would find Comprehend Clinical useful, request a demo and we'll set something up.

Feel free to contact me with any questions at my username at comprehendclinical.com

Being neck deep in clinical data ETL right now, I would love to hear some details on how one does real-time ETL and reporting while leaving data in place. Most of the clinical systems I've worked with have some pretty ugly data structures under the hood that are just barely relational. For a simple example: they might take a question that is a yes/no question and store the answers on two rows in the database: one for yes (with a value of 1 or 0) and one for no (also with a value of 1 or 0).

I long ago gave up on the thought that one could leave the data in place and work on it (vs traditional data warehousing approaches). If these guys have solved that problem, that's a product all on its own.

Thanks for your comment. I'd be happy to talk about it with you more, and potentially setup a demo against your data. If you're interested, please email me at my username at comprehendclinical.com, or fill out this form: http://www.comprehendclinical.com/demo.html

For reasons of HIPAA, this is an appliance rather than a 'cloud based' system?

Yes, we sell Comprehend Clinical as a deployable Enterprise Java application that our customers install in house.

Besides just HIPAA, the clinical industry also has to comply with Title 21 CFR Part 11 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_21_CFR_Part_11). There is a lot of discussion about how to take advantage of cloud computing while remaining compliant, but as of yet there's no definitive answer.

There should be a blog just about YC companies at this point.