Client Industry - State Government Agency

The Communicable Diseases Sections of the States’ Health Departments are responsible for the monitoring, prevention and control of infectious diseases, with the aim to reduce as far as practicable the incidence and prevalence of these diseases.

The accurate and timely monitoring of these diseases allow the organisation to:

• respond to specific incidents/cases and control outbreaks
• report more promptly to regional, local and federal government on serious cases
• develop and implement education and prevention strategies.

Client requirement

DCA were contracted by one of the State Health Departments to handle the entire systems implementation project for a replacement of its existing Notifiable Infectious Disease Surveillance (NIDS) system. This system was several years old and not providing adequate reporting and management facilities to ensure data integrity and timely analysis of possible disease incidences and outbreaks. The assignment was notable in that it was the largest Public Health IT project within that State Health Division.

The major objectives of the NIDS system were:

• capture and monitor data on notifications of infectious diseases
• provide detailed statistical, validation, monitoring and reporting functions
• provide mapping capabilities
• allow the capture of notifications electronically.

DCA's solution

DCA embarked on a thorough and detailed analysis and specification phase. The analysis team set about discovering and documenting each system requirement and designing a cohesive, functional and deliverable solution that exceeded users’ expectations. The Functional Specification document of 320 + pages detailed all aspects of the system down to each database field and screen label, as well as a functional prototype/migration of data to uncover any potential pitfalls. The specification process involved liaison with key users, formal reviews, inspecting existing functionality and demonstrations of prototypes to end-users. The resulting system included development and integration of web-based forms for electronic notification of diseases by GPs.

Customer benefits

The project was successfully implemented, on-time and to the client’s IT standards. DCA is continuing to exceed expectations in terms of project management, delivery, and adherence to on-going schedules.