Florida Department of Health Volusia County Health Department

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Florida Department of HealthVolusia County
Health Department

• Regina Harris
• Database Analyst, Environmental Health

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Responsibilities

• Regulate 28 Programs throughout the County
• Biomedical Waste
• Food Service
• Safe Drinking Water
• Onsite Sewage Treatment Disposal System
• Pools, Spa Pools, and Bathing Places
• Water Analysis
• Work Closely with Epidemiology Department
• conduct surveillance and investigate communicable
  diseases of environmental origin

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Primary Objectives For Using Mobile Technology

• A paperless inspection system
• Information in the hands of the inspectors at all
  times
• Field access to codes and procedures
• Accurate GPS Coordinates of facilities
• Flexible synchronization with existing data
  tracking systems

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Software

• ArcView
• ArcPad
• ArcPad Application Builder
• ArcPad StreetMap
• Visual CE
• Report CE
• Solo Office Solo Field

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Hardware

• Compaq IPAQ
• Recon Pocket PC
• Hard Drives
• Cameras
• Printers
• GPS Units

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Current Applications

• Types
• GIS/GPS
• Relational Database
• Information

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GIS Application
Using ArcView, the county is split into 4
geographic regions. These regions are further
divided into sections for each inspector. This is
accomplished by using the county boundary and
parcel shapefiles.
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GIS Application
Point shapefiles with custom symbols have been
created for each program and exported to ArcPad,
using information from our centralized tracking
system.
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GIS Application

• Doubling clicking on a symbol will bring up
  demographic information relating to the
  establishment and let you input inspection
  information.

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Information Layers

• Other shapefiles used are streets, highways,
  waterbodies, soils, water and sewer lines, etc.

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GPS Application

• Streets and/or highways layers are used on the
  Recon along with SOLO Field in our State
  Underground Petroleum Environmental Response Act
  (SUPER Act) Program to verify GPS coordinates of
  underground storage tanks. Interference from can
  cause misreading on GPS units.
• Safe Drinking Wells and Residential Wells layers
  are used to locate potential sources for
  contamination. We look for residential well with
  a 1/4 radius of the underground storage tank and
  safe drinking wells within a ½ mile radius.

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Relational Database Application

• Using Visual CE, we created inspection forms that
  capture electronic signatures. Information about
  establishments is downloaded to the IPAQ from an
  application that resides on the network,
  inspectors bring up the establishments on the
  IPAQ, perform the inspection, if necessary print
  a form to leave onsite, and synchronize the
  information back to the network, direct connect,
  using Activesync.

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Relational Database Application
Demographic Form

• Information is downloaded to the IPAQ from an
  application on network.

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Relational Database Application
Inspection Form
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Relational Database Application
Inspection Report
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Information Application

• Pocket Guides
• emergency procedures
• biological Incidents
• chemical incidents
• radiation incidents
• terrorist attacks
• emergency call list

These guides are in several formats, Microsoft
Reader, Pocket Word, and Web Pages formatted for
the IPAQ.
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Additional Info
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Benefits

• Increased Productivity
• Inspectors will have information on all EH
  programs permitted at a specific site.
• Eliminate duplication of effort
• Paperless Inspection System
• Information in the hands of the inspectors at all
  times
• Homeland Security
• Bioterrorism
• Terrorism
• Emergencies
• Hurricanes
• Tornadoes
• Wildfires

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Long Term Goals

• Once the system is fully operational, we will
  have the potential to close offices. Staff will
  not need to come into an office every day, most
  of their work will be done in the field, which
  result in less travel time and cost.
• We will have GPS coordinates on all
  establishments, in addition to drinking water
  wells and onsite sewage disposal systems, etc.
• Improved mapping capabilities for disaster
  response or disease outbreaks.
• Transmit data wireless in real time while staff
  is in the field, turnaround time to clients and
  other agencies will be greatly improved.

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Challenges

• Design and Implementation
• A lot of information is captured on paper, that
  we now need to capture electronically.
• Staff Acceptance
• Staff have a hard time giving up paper.
• Wirelessly Connectivity
• Because we are a health department, we have
  confidential patient data on our networks. We
  have not been approved to use real-time
  wirelessly connections to our staff.

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New Pilot Project IPOD

• Podcast - Video and Audio Public Service
  Announcements for public health issues.

Our website has a link to our PODCasthttp//www.
volusiahealth.com/eh
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Contact Information

• Regina Harris
• 1350 S Woodland Blvd
• DeLand, FL 32720
• 386.822.6243
• Regina_Harris_at_doh.state.fl.us