The Mississippi Department of Health, Bureau of Public Health Statistics, commenced birth and death registration in November 1912 with responsibility for registration, production of statistics, issuance of certified copies, archiving and privacy protection of these records. Mississippi has a population of 2.8 million and the Bureau registers approximately 120,000 vital events and certifies 450,000-500,000 copies of records each year. Current registrations include birth, death, fetal death, induced termination, marriage and divorce records, with adoptions and other amendments integrated into registered records. The Bureau issues certified copies for births, deaths and marriages, and provides searches for fact and county of divorce, as well as event verification.
Vitalware became the Bureau’s vital records software in June 2003. The system contains approximately nine million electronic event records and generates $3 million in fees annually. In addition, the system tracks all record and request activities, exports files for state and national vital statistics, and produces management statistics.
KE Software* has been a valuable partner in finding solutions for the increasing demand for vital records services. Vitalware tracks all activity related to individual records and this tracking is extremely helpful in streamlining office procedures, reviewing employee productivity, and alerting us to possible fraud situations.Vitalware has given us greater insight into our data and allowed us to have a much cleaner database.
With Vitalware EBC (Electronic Birth Certificate) each birthing hospital can enter registration information directly into an access-restricted hospital-specific centralized web repository. A certificate of live birth is printed for parent and certifier signatures and filing with the Bureau. The electronic record is automatically transmitted to the State Vitalware database.
At the Bureau, records and data not entered by the birth hospitals are key and double key entered, as are registrations for all other vital events. Matching birth and death records are linked, and requests for certified copies of records are entered into the Point Of Sale module linking the event record to the request record. Requests for record amendments are also entered and managed through this module, thereby producing an electronic trail of all changes.
Certified records are computer generated abstracts printed from Vitalware or copies printed from microfiche of the original paper record. The Bureau is in the process of scanning digital images of records into the Vitalware Multimedia module which will allow copies of the image to be printed on security paper directly from the system.
Platform
Sun Fire V880 Server, 4 Gb RAM, 216 Gb disk in RAID configuration.
*Now Axiell
