The Kentucky Department for Public Health (DPH) has announced the creation of the Kentucky Public Health Interoperable Communication System (KPHICS), a wide-ranging program that will allow interoperable communications and incident management between the state and local health departments statewide.

"We are very pleased to have acquired this collaborative crisis information communications system, which will provide real-time information sharing to facilitate decision-making in public health emergencies," said William D. Hacker, M.D., commissioner for public health and acting undersecretary for health at the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. "KPHICS will have the capability to link together local, state, federal and volunteer sources and provides users with a common operational system, giving public health workers and responders access to the critical operational data they need to make sound decisions quickly."

The main components of the KPHICS system are IRMS and WebEOC. IRMS is a Web-hosted solution that will provide the Inventory/Asset Management System component of KPHICS and will be used to manage and track assets related to the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), in addition to items purchased with federal grant funds statewide. Additionally, IRMS will allow entry of patient information, and track dispensing of medications and distribution of medical supplies in the event of a disaster and/or critical event. The WebEOC incident management software acts as a virtual emergency operations center over multiple disciplines, allowing crisis information to be universally available to authorized users during the planning, mitigation, response and recovery phases of an emergency.

Read Article: Government Technology, August 2007

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