News
Chicago's Cities Readiness Initiative (CRI) is Featured in Integrated Solutions
2008-04-08
- Replacing a time-consuming paper-based system with an automatic data capture solution is helping the city of Chicago better prepare for public health emergencies. Integrated Solutions, March 2008 The Cities Readiness Initiative (CRI) is a federally funded pilot program introduced to help U.S. cities increase their capacity to deliver medicines and medical supplies during a large-scale public health emergency, such as a bioterrorism attack, flu pandemic, or nuclear accident. The program is overseen by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chicago, under the auspices of the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH), is among several cities participating in the CRI pilot program. In a worst-case scenario, says Steve Mier, the agency’s director of administration, the CDPH would have a window of 48 hours within which to leverage the program to dispense medications to approximately 3 million residents citywide. In accordance with CRI requirements, the CDPH must keep on file “CRI Information Forms” — documents filled out by residents to advise the agency of their location and provide information about medications dispensed to them on a regular basis. SYSTEM YIELDS EFFICIENT DATA CAPTURE The solution devised by EKI comprises Datacap’s Taskmaster data capture software, Kodak and BÖWE BELL + HOWELL scanners, and an IBM FileNet enterprise content management (ECM) system. Using intelligent character recognition (ICR) and optical character recognition (OCR), the software gathers scanned information from completed CRI forms, including handwritten data and data from ‘check boxes,’ then enters it into the IBM FileNet database. Database information is indexed according to user-defined parameters, such as recipient location and type of medication taken. Should an emergency occur, the CDPH can use the content management engine to retrieve the information in a timely manner, in turn expediting the dispensing process, Mier says. He adds that the implementation, completed last year, did not pose any problems, but the challenge of ensuring that staff would always be prepared to use the system remained after the deployment was completed. “We hope to never have to use this solution for a large-scale public emergency,” Mier asserts. “However, we wanted our staff to be properly trained.” To meet this challenge, a decision was made to apply the technology to existing programs that would require personnel to interact with it regularly, thereby maintaining high levels of proficiency. The two programs currently utilizing the application (for which staff received hands-on training) are the School-Based Oral Health Program and the Immunization Program. The former provides free dental services to as many as 400,000 Chicago children in about 600 elementary schools, while the latter is intended to increase resident immunizations and decrease the incidence of diseases that are preventable with vaccinations. MULTIPLE FORMS, MULTIPLE REQUIREMENTS With 120,000 immunization forms and 500,000 dental forms annually, the CDPH’s data entry workforce could no longer support the volume of paperwork using manual methods. The use of paper records also made reporting on the program’s efficacy an extremely difficult proposition, and searching for historical records had proven extremely labor-intensive. With the solution in place, the input of data and retrieval of immunization and dental forms alike takes a fraction of the time needed prior to deployment. “Even more importantly, the ongoing use of the technology for both programs means staff can support the CRI requirements when and if a disaster should occur,” Mier observes. “That benefit alone is of the utmost value.” Use Data Capture Technology To Prepare For Emergencies
Written by: Julie Ritzer Ross
“We determined that working within the 48-hour time constraint would be impossible using paper-based methods to capture information from, store, and retrieve the forms,” Mier says. Electronic Knowledge Interchange (EKI), a technology solutions provider, was asked to design an automated application that would allow for efficient, accurate data capture at a high rate of speed. The technology also had to offer a search capability.
The School-Based Oral Health Program generates many different forms, in both English and Spanish. In order for CDPH to bill the state and federal healthcare programs for the children they serve, the system must capture and deliver information pertaining to their treatment and care. Meanwhile, Chicago’s Immunization Program involves distribution of immunizations and vaccinations to nearly 36,000 people per year and requires completion of multiple forms for each recipient, all of which must be registered and tracked.