PVM's Public Health Case Study

Speed is crucial when it comes to outbreaks. For public health institutions to accomplish their goal of protection and awareness, they need to be able to work with state and local health partners to rapidly share case-related data. And this data must be accurate. Outbreaks happen and spread quickly, and the data needs to be analyzed and shared among the necessary partners to communicate warnings to the public about ongoing outbreaks linked to contaminated food or infected animals, recalls, or to help make decisions regarding other actions that need to be taken.

The challenge

Our Public Health client protects communities around the world through the prevention and control of disease, disability, and death caused by foodborne, waterborne, and environmentally transmitted infections. This client has multiple branches tracking and analyzing multiple streams of data, so they implemented a system that would service all of those branches. This platform pulls in data from a variety of sources and has over 450 users so it needs to be accurate, available, and usable so that the client can make the correct recommendations concerning outbreak prevention and resolution as well as work to identify trends. However, the platform requires ongoing work and maintenance to make sure that this data continues to be useful.

Where PVM comes in

Patches & Upgrades:

We build and release the necessary patches and upgrades in this system. We also identify and quickly fix any system failures or bugs.

Customized Ontology:

Not all data coming in is in the same format—it could be in case notes, reports, or simply numbers. The ontology of the software system that PVM helps to define and customize for the client allows this variety of data to be accurately categorized.

Dashboard Creation & Communication:

We’ve built internal dashboards for our clients to understand the data coming in from a variety of different sources. These dashboards enable them to share information back to their different state, federal, and local partners to provide 360 communication and analysis.

Migrating & Mapping:

We are also working on an additional implementation for another software system that tracks specific disease cases. Here, we are migrating, mapping the data, and linking database systems to build a more comprehensive tool.

Training & Security:

PVM engineers have trained, and will continue to train, users on these two platforms as they grow and evolve. We also continually make sure the data is protected and user groups are only able to access their own specific sets of information.

Public health data, especially outbreak data, can be comprehensive and intensive—but we are here to help! Contact us today for your data infrastructure needs.