Great Brook Valley Health Center has a state-of-the-art MIS infrastructure consisting of a Practice Management System, Electronic Medical Record, Lab Information System, Pharmacy System, Dental Record System, E-Mail Server, Network Server, Local Area Network, and Internet T-l connectivity. The challenge remains to support and share resources inter-departmentally (Medical, Dental, Lab, Mental Health, and Pharmacy), and to extend that support structure to a growing number of sites. The overall goal of this project is to enable communication and Internet-based access for health care providers to internal and external clinical information systems. Patients will receive more efficient and appropriate treatment when providers receive timely, pertinent clinical information via internal clinical systems or federal/private health sector database systems. The project goals are to: 1) Extend existing Internet connections from the main site to three remote facilities; 2) Implement firewall security against hackers or malicious acts that break in using an Internet connection; 3) Provide Internet-based access to clinical information systems and electronic mail via Virtual Private Networks (VPN), and 4) Acquire more e-mail client access licenses, thus allowing more medical providers to have e-mail accounts. To accomplish these goals, grant funds will be used to purchase and install hardware and software. Technical support and training will be contributed in-kind on an ongoing basis by the clinical information system support staff
