BEPS (BioEduPsychoSocial) Information management software

Introduction
With more than 50 million people suffering from mental disorders, behavioral healthcare has become a serious concern and challenging issue in the United States. Lake Grove Schools is a chain of residential schools and treatment centers providing behavioral healthcare programs and education for adolescents across the country. The patients are referred to these schools by different agencies for various treatment programs. Clinical and medical teams examine the eligibility of these children by conducting interviews and other tests before accepting them. Upon admission, they are sent to different campuses depending on the treatment required.

Problem
Lake Grove has six campuses located over four states and employs more than 600 people. During admission of the adolescent, his or her general, medical and fiscal details (in case the treatment is funded by more than one agency) are collected by the Lake Grove Schools. Depending upon funding resources and requirements of the patient, treatment plans and target goals are set and executed. During the duration of the treatment, all relevant information (including clinical, educational, residential, medical and incidental) is recorded. During this period the patient is sent to different facilities for education, medical and recreational purposes. When the patient is discharged, his or her records are provided to the patient for future reference and subsequently a follow-up is conducted to update his or her status. A patient may also be transferred from one campus to another during the treatment program.
Lake Grove Schools were maintaining clients' treatment record in separate files which made it extremely difficult to access complete information since each department recorded and maintained their own files.

Risks/Challenges
Our main challenge was to design a solution that allowed access via intranet from the school's campus or Internet. Security and authorized access to information was also a serious concern due to the sensitive nature of the data. The client also had aversion to any re-installation in case of software upgrades and modifications since they had numerous workstations in their organization

Solution
A web based software solution was designed and developed to augment the process of information management in Lake Grove Schools, making it more efficient. The software covers the entire process of education and treatment of mentally challenged children starting from enquiry or referral to treatment planning and residential care and the subsequent discharge and status tracking of patients. The principal features of the system include an enterprise-software like user interface on web, faster execution of scripts due to .NET technology, comprehensive reporting and role based security thereby making the information about a client accessible to all authorized users across departments with the help of a few clicks. The tabbed presentation of fields in a web form facilitate the user in entering large amounts of information while permitting the implementation of role-based security in the system. This tab-based security does not prevent the user in working on other tabs (if permitted) while preventing unauthorized access to sensitive information. The solution has been designed such that it leaves room for the user to implement the use of palm pilots and swap cards in on-field data entry and signature verification as and when required.

Environment
ASP.Net, SQL Server 2000, XML, JavaScript, DHTML, Crystal Reports 8.5, Acrobat Reader, VS.Net, IIS 5.0, VB.Net