CCICADA Gets Grant from NJ Dept. of Health and Senior Services to Port its Health Emergency Situational Awareness System Hippocrates to Smart Phones
New Jersey’s response to the anthrax scare of 2001 developed into Hippocrates, a web-based situational awareness tool shared by the state’s public health community and developed by the NJ Department of Health and Senior Services (NJ DHSS). Although Hippocrates includes features such as automated e-mail messaging, GIS is the heart of it.Hippocrates fuses fixed geographic data elements with dynamic data that brings maps to life. Health-specific layers include the locations of long-term care facilities and a module for mapping chemical facilities. Users can also see real-time displays of weather and traffic and the movements of ambulances via Global Positioning System devices mounted on the vehicles. Because Hippocrates is web-based it is easy to connect all components of the state’s health system and its partners in the state emergency operations center and at the federal level.
Hippocrates also enables the Department to assess healthcare resources and communicate with its partners as an emergency is unfolding. Federal partners and other state agencies, like the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness and the New Jersey State Police, have access to the system as well. Other agencies having access to the system include the State Health Command Center, regional medical coordination centers (MCCs), county and city health departments, emergency medical services (EMS) agencies, federal agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, and external agencies such as the NJ Hospital Association. Outside of emergencies, Hippocrates provides the department with situational awareness on the status of the health system in New Jersey on a day-to-day basis.
Hippocrates aims to provide “dynamic data integration” by considering real-time needs such as incidents, events, weather and traffic, medical stockpiles, hospital divert status, and ambulance location. It integrates a variety of “health layers” including command centers, long-term care facilities, acute and non-acute care hospitals, hospitals both in-state and in surrounding states, health departments, medical stockpile locations, blood banks, points of distribution. Hippocrates also incorporates map layers such as post offices, schools, and roads, in NJ municipalities, and NJ and sourrounding-state counties.
CCICADA has received acontract for $250K from NJ DHSS to develop Smart Phone Applications to connect to their Hippocrates system. The specific project is to develop a smart phone interface to the Incident Command functionof their on-line Hippocrates system. In particular, CCICADA will produce iOS and Android based applicationsthat will let operators in the field create and update reports withHippocrates in a secure manner, making Hippocrates more broadly applicable. Testing of these applications will be carriedout by EMS personnel associated with the RobertWoodJohnsonUniversity hospital under a subcontract from CCICADA.
Source:
New Jersey Health Preparedness and Response