In the words of Mark Allen, founder of Corticon

Corticon founder Dr. Mark Allen shares the full story behind rules management innovation:  

The idea for Corticon started back in 1995, during my medical training at UCLA.  As a part of government-funded research projects, I built rule-based systems to automate clinical decisions, such as what diagnostic tests to order, or treatments to render.  My research proved that physicians using these systems practiced a much higher quality of care at a lower cost (they ordered more of the appropriate tests and treatments, but far fewer of the inappropriate ones).  And, they were twice as fast in the encounter.  I was sold.  This was the future of medicine.

The problem was that the systems were prohibitively difficult to build and maintain.  Using the best available software development technologies, and a great team of programmers, the systems took years to develop.  Worse still, as soon as we finished development, the guidelines would change.  Even simple changes would take weeks to code, and would often break our systems.  I became very interested in this problem, and how to solve it.

I discovered ways to more easily visualize the logic as sets of interrelated business rules.  This provided a common language between subject matter experts, who defined the business rules, and programmers, who implemented the rules.  Ultimately, this helped accelerate application development and change cycles, and ensure the accuracy of the logic.

I saw the opportunity to transform not just healthcare delivery, but also decision-making within other industries.  In early 2000, I joined forces with Pedram Abrari, an expert in Enterprise Java, XML and AI technologies. He brought deep expertise in developing rule-based systems in financial services and HR applications as well as innovative ideas to incorporate into our product. Our founding team of expert engineers began building the Corticon solution, and today, Corticon products are used to power billions of decisions every day in diverse industries and applications.

Now, as part of Progress’ extensive BPM, BI and CEP offerings, Corticon BRMS has the ability to expand into new areas of decision management and responsive actions. We are excited to begin the next chapter of business agility and responsiveness with Progress Software.

If you have questions or comments, feel free to contact me at maallen@progress.com. If you’re an existing Corticon customer, you can continue to use your existing Corticon contacts for support, professional services and sales, and if you’d like more information about our solutions, please contact a Progress/Corticon sales person.