| Center For Disease Control
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Background
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recognized
as the lead federal agency for protecting the health and safety of
people - at home and abroad, providing credible information to
enhance health decisions, and promoting health through strong
partnerships. CDC serves as the national focus for developing and
applying disease prevention and control, environmental health, and
health promotion and education activities designed to improve the
health of the people of the
United States
.
CDC
works side by side with national, state and local organizations to
help protect communities from dangerous environmental exposures. By
assisting state and local health departments, CDC works to protect
the public every day.
In today's
global environment, new diseases have the potential to spread across
the world in a matter of days, or even hours, making early detection
and action more important than ever. The ability to have accurate,
up-to-date information at hand is essential in emergency response
situations. CDC plays a
critical role in controlling these diseases, traveling at a moment's
notice to investigate outbreaks abroad or at home.
Situation
The
CDC’s emergency response team in
Atlanta
is responsible for
handling calls regarding outbreaks and public health threats.
The team responds through speedily putting into action
approved protocol procedures. While
these procedures were thorough in their development, getting access
to the information quickly was not optimal. Emergency
protocol procedures were paper-based in coded notebooks for
emergency reference. In a situation where moments count, having the
correct information at hand was essential.
Strategy
The CDC had originally purchased the Novo Knowledge Base Software to
manage an internal reference base of personnel information.
After using the software first hand, the CDC recognized its
promising use to house important emergency response protocol
information. The goal
was to provide the first response emergency help desk personnel with
the valuable information they needed to initiate an approved
response action. Emergency
procedures could be stored in the powerful knowledge base for
immediate retrieval in an urgent situation. Protocol procedures
would be cataloged in the knowledge base to ensure accuracy and
speed of retrieval.
Results
The Novo
Knowledge Base was united with the help desk system currently being
used by the emergency response team. The built-in article category
tree allows CDC protocol articles to be easily categorized into the
knowledge base system. The
Novo knowledge base allows articles to be grouped by topic, with
easy to use drill down navigation to locate a specific article by
topic. Articles are
completely searchable to deliver instant relevant results and robust
features allow the knowledge base to be customized for a variety of
uses.
Once the
protocol procedures were input into the knowledge base, they could
be easily referenced within the help desk system.
No longer is it necessary to physically locate paper
documents – now appropriate procedures are delivered within
moments.
Empowering the
emergency response team with speedy protocol procedures has been
indispensable to the CDC. CDC
says “the results are a more efficient, speedy retrieval of
information to quickly identify protocol”.
Novo solutions is proud to be a part of this critical public
health agency.
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