Office of Information Management

The Office of Information Management (OIM) is responsible for the development, maintenance and security of information technology systems. Working with its infrastructure partner, the Virginia Information Technology Agency, OIM also provides servers, network, video conferencing, PCs and e-mail to the agency that enable VDH to conduct its core business of protecting and promoting health among Virginians.

WebVISION Supports Local Health Departments in Delivering Clinical Services to Patients
OIM administers WebVISION, a state-of-the-art system that manages the business functions associated with providing clinical services such as registration, tracking services received, billing, and scheduling appointments. It also includes a complete immunization module that provides vaccine history, decision support and vaccine inventory management. As a reflection of the complexity of VDH’s business, WebVision requires almost 900 separate screens to allow full functionality.

OIM supports WIC through WICNet
The Division of Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and Community Nutrition Services provides nutrition education and counseling as well as nutrition support to eligible pregnant women, nursing mothers and infants. WICNet supports clinical visits including printing WIC checks at the point of service, which are then redeemed at participating stores for specified foods. WICNet is an essential part of the WIC program, and clients cannot receive checks unless the WICNet application is operational. Critical applications such as WICNet and Web VISION also run at the VDH disaster recovery site to provide maximum availability in case of a failure in the primary servers.

OIM Provides Critical Infrastructure Support for Emergency Preparedness and Response Programs
One of the challenges VDH faces is the need to manage large-scale distribution of drugs and vaccines during public health emergencies, such as a terrorist attack using a biological or chemical agent. OIM is currently developing software to manage such distributions, including inventory tracking, dispensing records and adverse event tracking.

Volunteers, a critical resource during the response to a large public health emergency, are being recruited, trained and organized by many community-level Medical Reserve Corps. OIM is developing an application to support these groups by providing the ability to track, manage and mobilize volunteers. An important feature will be the ability to track credentials and skills in order to identify and mobilize necessary volunteers.

In addition to alerting volunteers during an emergency, VDH is responsible for providing alerts to licensed medical professionals. Through the Health Alert Network, OIM has the ability to provide timely alerts and critical information to medical providers at any time through phone, e-mail and fax messages.