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Case Management
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| History |
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Lead is a well-documented environmental hazard
with serious health consequences, particularly for children under six
years of age. DSI automated Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, called
"Lead Quest" is designed to keep track of the blood lead levels
of one million children in a major metropolitan area, and to record
all the legally required actions associated with high lead level cases
within that population.
The legacy system that Lead Quest replaced was designed to run on a mainframe.
The
legacy system required the manual entry of all data, including the
400,000 blood tests reported annually. The Department of Health wanted
to migrate to a Client/Server environment to take advantage of the
advanced development and maintenance tools as well as the more
extensive functionality available with distributed technology.
The
Department of Health initially tried to undertake the job themselves.
After five years of failed attempts, the Department was about to lose
the Federal funding allocated to complete the project. It was at that
point that DSI was engaged to perform the work. The job was done in six
months.
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| Results |
The new Lead Quest system connects to the
City Planning Mainframe Geo-Support system, which it uses to verify at
least 3,000 addresses each day. The Database contains upwards of ten million
records. It also receives an average of 3,000 records daily, which it
downloads from e-mail and processes instantly. To cope with such an extensive
database, DSI used artificial intelligence techniques to develop an efficient
Name Match algorithm to distinguish between children with identical names
and to highlight names that were input with errors.
The Front-end application uses C and PowerBuilder.
An object-oriented design enables the creation and inventorying of
reusable components. The system architecture is three-tier, employing a
client, a database server, and an application server to balance the
workload of this multi-user system. The system offers:
- Automated, large-scale data downloading and processing
- Mainframe connectivity for data validation and referencing
- A module employing Artificial Intelligence for name and address lookups
- Blood-test results linked to each child and each child's residence
- DOH staff activity logs rapid search and update within a database of 10 million records.
- Automated and simplified blood slip processing that reduces labor, human errors, and the paper load.
- Substantial savings in time,
researching and acting on cases using the "Efficient Name Match"
algorithm employing artificial intelligence.
- Enhanced data accuracy and database integrity with a dramatic reduction in the duplication of records.
- A rapid-migration plan that
enabled the client to adopt the new system in time to meet their
Federal mandate while minimizing expenses.
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Technology 