PITTSBURGH , Jan. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Health Monitoring Systems (HMS) (www.hsminc.com), a pioneer in developing community health surveillance systems for public health departments and others in the healthcare arena, said today that the Bergen County (NJ) Department of Health Services is now utilizing the company's recently launched Mergence(TM) healthcare data integration engine.
The Mergence open source, HL7-compliant and bi-directional software package serves as a data collection and routing engine, enabling users to more readily manage and integrate clinical data from multiple sources often built on disparate hardware and software systems. Mergence also acts as the collection point for data sent by hundreds of organizations to HMS' datacenter.
By utilizing Mergence, public health authorities can more readily accept multiple data streams from hospitals and other healthcare providers, and then transform and distribute the data as necessary. Healthcare providers, in turn, can streamline and improve their reporting requirements of infectious diseases such as MRSA, and their nosocomial disease control programs, through Mergence.
"Many of the challenges facing healthcare systems reflect the need for better data management. Public health authorities, healthcare providers, testing labs and others require more powerful integration tools to turn data into knowledge and insight about public health and safety," said Kevin J. Hutchison, HMS president and CEO. "Mergence fulfills that need."
Added Somini M. John, MPH, Bergen County Department of Health Services epidemiologist, "We are delighted to be an early adopter of HMS' new Mergence service. We have worked with HMS on other endeavors and are impressed by the company's commitment to advance healthcare information technology to protect and safeguard public health and safety."
With a population of more than 900,000, Bergen County is home to the largest hospital in New Jersey. The county's Department of Health Service is a member of northern New Jersey's Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI), a six- county consortium organized to improve early detection of bioterrorism, disease and other public health and safety events.
For more information on Mergence, please visit www.hmsinc.com/mergence.
ABOUT HEALTH MONITORING SYSTEMS
Health Monitoring Systems (www.hmsinc.com) is a pioneer in community health surveillance. The company maintains online networks and provides open source software tools to collect and manage data from hospitals and other healthcare providers, and then offers analytics of the aggregated information to detect, pinpoint and understand real-time and emerging health and safety issues. Clients include public health authorities, hospitals and others in the healthcare industry.
Media Contact John Buckman Health Monitoring Systems 412.231.2020 x. 109 [email protected]SOURCE Health Monitoring Systems
