DIDATA Creates Health Alert Network Portal

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) was the first to adopt Dimension Data's (Didata's) Health Alert Network portal solution, developed in conjunction with partners Hewlett- Packard, Intel and Microsoft. The solution by the global firm with U.S. offices in Reston, Va., is designed to coordinate a swift response to bioterrorist and other public health threats.

Some main features of NYC's DOHMH Health Alert Network include high-speed, secure Internet connection to provide instantaneous access to disease reports, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) information and response plans. There are also early warning systems, including multichannel alerting capabilities with sophisticated call-down abilities, to notify authorities and the media regarding potential emergency situations.

The secure and scalable solution allows local, state and federal health authorities to coordinate with each other and law enforcement. There's also a central library of current, accessible and searchable clinical material for researching treatments.

The portal solution features an alert mechanism that can send a message to a broadcast system, which then sends the message to local hospitals and the CDC through pagers, cell phones and e-mail. Interactive communications tools in the solution allow one hospital to upload a diagnostic or treatment-related document so that another hospital can download it and physicians at both locations can log into a chat room to discuss it in realtime. Didata's offering also functions as a conferencing solution to, for instance, host an online infectious disease seminar.

The project included network assessment, building and deployment of the portal application and infrastructure integration, as well as training, hosting and maintenance, said Andrew Cohen, managing director of Government Services for Integrations Services at Didata.

Ed Carubis, chief information officer for New York's DOHMH, said a key factor in choosing Dimension Data was the ability to deal with the integrator as a single source of contact throughout the engagement, instead of having to deal with the multiple vendors involved in the solution.

In addition, Carubis said NYC's investments made in health emergency preparedness are paying off and moving on to include the creation of a New York City Medical Provider Portal, dubbed NYCMED.

"We're really creating a knowledge management center on the Internet for our health partners so people can use it on a daily basis as a one-stop shop for medical information for providers in the city," said Carubis. "After all, you don't want people to first get to know the system in the event of an emergency."

Didata's Cohen said the success in NYC has translated into contracts with six other states. Since bioterrorism is not just a threat to the United States, the solution is also being targeted toward government health agencies around the world, he said.

"Depending on a state or local health department's budget, resources such as CDC funding and existing infrastructure," said Cohen. "[Dimension Data's] Health Alert Network solution can be sold fully-customized, off-the-shelf or subscription-based."

Funding for the New York City project was provided in part by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Ga. as part of the CDC's national Health Alert Network project, said Calubris.