Extensibility

UNC can easily adapt a conversion from one source to multiple sources. Pervasive Data Integrator allows NC DETECT to handle incoming structure and unstructured formats including ASCII Delimited, ASCII Fixed, Access 2000, Excel and XML.

Affordability

The cost-effective licensing, maintenance and support cost of Pervasive Data Integrator fits nicely into UNC’s budget and gives the organization the confidence that it will be able to meet the future needs of stake holders.

Printable Format

NC DETECT, a Web-based health surveillance system, relies on Pervasive Data Integrator 

North Carolina citizens are safer and healthier, thanks to timely NC DETECT, a Web-based early event detection and public health surveillance system managed by the University of North Carolina Department of Emergency Medicine (UNC DEM) in collaboration with the North Carolina Division of Public Health (NC DPH).

NC DETECT is part of the Carolina Center for Health Informatics and keeps key professionals up to date about important health information. Using CDC’s Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) algorithms from the Early Aberration Reporting System (EARS), NC DETECT monitors several data sources for suspicious patterns. The reporting system also provides broader public health surveillance reports for emergency department visits related to hurricanes, injuries, asthma, vaccine-preventable diseases, occupational health and others.

UNC needs a highly reliable and cost-effective data and application integration system to power its surveillance monitoring and reporting, and Pervasive® Data Integrator™ is the system of choice.

Data reliability

NC DETECT receives data on at least a daily basis from five types of data sources: emergency departments, the statewide poison center, the statewide EMS data collection system, a regional wildlife center and three laboratories from the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine, ranging in format from ASCII flat files to unstructured data and XML files. The 139,000 records coming in daily from more than 350 entities needed to be standardized and loaded into NC DETECT’s SQL database.

Given that reliability is a must, as well as the fact that NC DETECT is a state- funded project with a very tight budget, the right fit needed to be found. "The lack of standardization of public health-related data, especially emergency department data, requires a flexible data processing approach," said Dennis Falls, ETL Manager and Database Administrator for the Carolina Center for Health Informatics. Falls knew custom code would take too long to develop and be difficult to maintain, and so he looked at other options, including Pervasive Software’s integration offerings.

Cost-effective, highly reliable Pervasive Data Integrator standardizes health-related data

Pervasive Data Integrator™ cost effectively standardizes data from hospitals and EMS systems across the state, veterinary labs, state poison center and regional wildlife center, no matter what format. "The flexibility of the tool allows us to accept data we would not otherwise be able to," Dennis Falls said. "We’re also able to add non-Emergency Department data sources easily."

The high input of files on a daily basis requires mapping capabilities that speed process. Pervasive Map Designer has provided a valued solution that allows Falls to automate aspects of his ETL work.

Data standardization/reporting process

Pervasive brings the ETL capabilities needed for critical public health surveillance system

 
Pervasive Data Integrator allows for cost-efficient and reliable ETL processing for NC DETECT–a task that is critical to the cutting-edge operation. As ETL Manager and Database Administrator Dennis Falls pointed out, "Early event detection and timely Public Health surveillance are quickly evolving fields and we are confident that we will be able to accommodate any new data source processing requirements that come our way. Using Pervasive Data Integrator also has greatly reduced my ETL development and processing time allowing me to dedicate more time towards ensuring data quality."

NC DETECT currently receives data from 109 hospital-based emergency departments, 250 EMS agencies, three veterinary laboratories, the state poison control center and a regional wildlife center. Of the approximately 139,000 records received daily, NC DETECT can identify and remove duplicate records, append new records, conduct merges, and update records as new data files are received.

Custom reporting aided with Pervasive

ETL Manager and Database Administrator Dennis Falls of the Carolina Center for Health Informatics receives many requests for custom reports and has found it easy to extract the data out of the NC DETECT database to whatever format the user desires. "There’s a lot more we can do with Pervasive Data Integrator, and we will as we take on more requests and data," Falls added.

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