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City to Text Message Health Alerts

The Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) has purchased a communication system to power the PDPH Health Response Alert Network. The network will enable the department to communicate with thousands of employees, partners, and medical reserve corps volunteers. The network will be interoperable with the Philadelphia Department of Public Property, Fire, Police and Center City District systems.

The Roam Secure Alert Network (RSAN) health solution was purchased using grant money from the Centers for Disease Control to promote state, regional, and local preparedness for health related emergencies. PDPH will have a secure, centralized, redundant, Web-accessible contact database of thousands of public health officials who can be easily managed, grouped, and alerted in seconds. Alerts will be sent for routine, urgent, and emergency communications for the department as well as to other partner agencies in the city.

The Philadelphia Health Response Alert Network (HRAN) will also be expanded in the months ahead to actively manage the Philadelphia Medical Reserve Corps Volunteer program. Features that support the management and recruitment of Medical Reserve Corp volunteers include:

--Online recruitment of volunteers and self-management of existing volunteer contact information and credentials

--Allocating human resources across dispensing sites

--Tracking and managing key information about volunteer credentials and licensing --Distributing e-newsletters to active volunteers

--Delivering training notification and tracking for medical reserve corps volunteers.

Roam Secure will play an essential role for the Philadelphia Department of Public Healths alerting and emergency response capabilities, said Dr. Esther Chernak, Acute Communicable Disease Medical Specialist of the PDPH Division of Disease Control. In addition to linking into a city-wide interoperable communication system, we have the means to rapidly coordinate and deploy resources in response to public health emergency situations.

In the event of a disease outbreak such as the avian flu or a bio-terrorism incident, the HRAN system could be activated in seconds and provide Philadelphia Health Officials real-time, two-way text-based communication with volunteers on the medical reserve corps teams, as well as other key officials throughout the city. Alerts can be sent to cell phones, e-mail, Blackberry/Treo/PDAs, and pagers. Alerts can also be initiated remotely and can include attachments with additional instructions telling volunteers where they are deployed in the case of an emergency.

Roam Secures solution offers public health officials a way for medical volunteers to maintain their personal information and to manage their various teams prior-to and during incidents. Fairfax County Public Health has been working with Roam Secure to power their Medical Reserve Alert Network (MRCAN) since February of 2004. The Fairfax MRCAN (see http://www.fairfaxmrc.org) was funded with grant money from the department of Health and Human Services. Fairfax plans to have 13,000 volunteers who will be registered, credentialed and trained on their system. In addition, several major counties in the National Capital Region are expanding their existing Roam Secure systems to the public health community via the Health Alert Network and MRCAN functionality.

For more information on the RS Health Alert Network, MRCAN and/or Roam Secure, visit: http://www.roamsecure.net .