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MCHERDC houses several independent data systems maintained for various state agencies. MCHERDC staff members develop, operate, and maintain several live web-based data collection and reporting programs under contract from Children's Medical Services under the Florida Department of Health.
The MCHERDC data center contains historical and current records of mothers and children served by Children's Medical Services (CMS), Early Steps Program (ES) and the Regional Perinatal Intensive Care Centers Program (RPICC). These data are updated on a real-time basis through a web-based interface. There can be 600 or more users making multiple transactions on a daily basis, and MCHERDC has support staff to handle any issues that arrise from using the data systems.
The MCHERDC data warehouse contains maternal and child health records from pregnancy through early childhood and education records from preschool through high school. Warehouse databases include Vital Statistics records, Healthy Start prenatal screening/service records, WIC, records of the Childhood Lead Poisoning Surveillance system, and the Florida Birth Defects Registry (Department of Health); hospital discharge and Medicaid eligibility/claims records (Agency for Health Care Administration); student course loads, grades, standardized test results, attendance, and behavior referrals (Department of Education).
The Center stores and validates these data, links them to related data files, analyzes trends and predictors, publishes reports, and publishes research on the impact of various risk factors and program interventions on health status outcomes. The Center makes the raw and linked data files available to program managers at state agencies and to qualified persons for epidemiological research.
The datasets are linked, stored, and managed in our data warehouse with multiple levels of security. We use state of the art hardware, software, and a combination of PC and server-side SAS to manage the large databases. Additionally, the datasets and computer programs are backed-up off site at a hurricane-proof facility.
