DALLAS, Feb. 17, 2005 -- The Pennsylvania National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (PA-NEDSS) was named public health winner of the coveted Davies Award sponsored by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) at an awards ceremony Tuesday night. PA-NEDSS is the first fully integrated disease surveillance system in the nation. Deloitte Consulting LLP ("Deloitte Consulting") worked with Pennsylvania to design, build, integrate and maintain the system, which serves a public health role as well as a bioterrorism detection and response role.

"This award enables Pennsylvania to showcase this critical system," said Robert N. Campbell, vice chairman of Deloitte & Touche USA LLP and the national industry leader of Deloitte's Public Sector practice. "Pennsylvania is a pioneer in this area, and this comprehensive, adaptable system should now be viewed as a model for other states to implement their own disease surveillance systems."

PA-NEDSS is a secure, web-based tool used by medical and public health professionals in Pennsylvania for disease reporting, disease surveillance and case management. The Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH) worked with the Bureaus of Epidemiology, Communicable Diseases, Family Health, and Community Health and worked with Deloitte Consulting LLP to integrate four standalone, legacy disease surveillance mechanisms and paper-based reporting for over 60 conditions within infectious diseases, vaccine preventable diseases, sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis and lead poisoning. All 67 counties in the state currently use the system. To date, the system has been used to issue 365,025 disease reports and 392,230 investigations electronically, resulting in faster statewide response to disease outbreaks. It is built on the standards defined by the Centers for Disease Control.

District, county and municipal health departments, as well as state health centers, hospitals, laboratories, clinics, and physicians, currently utilize PA-NEDSS. The primary objective of the system is to enhance the Pennsylvania DOH's decision-making process through faster and more accurate data exchange. Rather than rely on a paper-based process, public health interventions are now expedited through the availability of centralized, near-real-time data. Public health workers at both the local and state levels are able to view and analyze information in PA-NEDSS as soon as it has been entered.

"PA-NEDSS has changed how we operate and has vastly improved how we're able to react to and manage outbreaks," said Michelle S. Davis, deputy secretary for Health Planning and Assessment at the Pennsylvania DOH. "Unlike other systems, PA-NEDSS does more than collect data and report on an individual level. It acts as an intelligent decision support tool, analyzing trends and providing an aggregate view of diseases and outbreaks across the state."

PA-NEDSS was instrumental in tracking and managing a Hepatitis A outbreak in November 2003. The use of the system quickly alerted the Pennsylvania Bureau of Epidemiology to an unusual number of Hepatitis A cases that appeared within a short timeframe. State public health investigators were then able to investigate the outbreak, track the source to a restaurant, close the restaurant and quickly locate, treat and monitor those that had been exposed in order to stop the disease from spreading.

In addition to the Davies award, PA-NEDSS was recognized last year as one of 12 winners of the Gracie Hopper Government Technology Leadership (Gracie) Award from Government Executive magazine.

As used in this press release, the term "Deloitte" includes Deloitte & Touche USA LLP and its subsidiaries Deloitte & Touche LLP, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Deloitte Tax LLP.

About the Davies Awards of Excellence Dr. Nicholas E. Davies was an Atlanta-based practice physician committed to the ideal of improving patient care through better health information management. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine patient record study committee, which coined the term "computer-based patient record." Dr. Davies was chairperson-elect of the American College of Physicians. In April 1991, he was tragically killed in a plane crash with Senator John G. Tower (Rep.) of Texas. His ideals live on in the Davies Award of Excellence.

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