Crisis Intervention Teams - Referral Management System |
Crisis Intervention Association of Colorado
Castle Rock, CO USA
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Crisis Intervention Teams - Referral Management System (CIT-RMS) is an
award-winning (www.citac.us) web-based enterprise application that supports
an unlimited number of police agencies, mental health facilities, and consumers,
all under the umbrella of state government. The application manages CIT (Crisis
Intervention Teams) Referrals provided by police departments to healthcare
workers via secure means. The application allows all entities to communicate
through a central location without any one entity knowing of the existence of
the others. The application allows for real-time statistical information access
on all levels.
There are several "role" types in this application. Depending on the user's rights,
a user registers by completing a membership application form online with a username
and password. The user is considered inactive until he receives an email confirmation.
Once the user is confirmed, the user has the ability to complete a CIT referral,
which is passed on to the medical center for processing. There are several levels
of security, each allowing the logged-in user to see critical statistical information.
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Application size and scope |
At this time, there is only one database, which acts as an enterprise application.
Access is geared towards law enforcement and emergency response personnel. We used
a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database containing several database tables with hundreds
of stored procedures and as many views. The application has been live since August 1,
2010, and we have recorded approximately 500 referrals. It has hundreds of web pages,
and we estimate 1,000 referrals per month in 2011.
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The login page used to secure the application.
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This is a test site for the application because any data on the live site is privileged.
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This is the data collection form on a smaller scale.
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The medical questionnaire, which is used to tally illnesses.
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Medical facility processing form.
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The Project |
The project took one developer about four months to complete.
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Code extensions and customizations |
We also wrote a lot of our own code to facilitate this enterprise application.
Code customizations included the following:
| To check to see if a database ID was in the system - duplicate entries
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| Color coded rows with database ID selection
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| Set Audit on insert
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| Session variables
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| Catch selected index change
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| Error Messaging
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| Where clauses
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| Pagination
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| Application-wide security
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| Dynamically set page to user login
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| Stored procedures
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| External DLLs
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| Validate field value immediately
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We used Infragistics and Crystal Reporting.
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Page layout customizations |
We did not make any page customizations nor did we create any application-specific design themes.
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Iron Speed Designer impact |
We believe we saved approximately $90,000 and over a year of development on this project.
This application was complex because it needed to service several different agencies without
allowing these agencies access to each other's data. This data is protected by HIPPA (Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), which governs all information exchanged between
health facilities and outside entities. HIPPA is a federal law that protects the medical
information of all patients.
Iron Speed Designer saved us a lot of time because we did not have to build the user interface,
business rules, and database business objects. With Iron Speed Designer, we could spend our
time developing the specific functionality of this unique project.
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Next steps |
Our plans are to expand CIT-RMS to other states which have a CIT program. The State of
Colorado is setting the standard for Crisis Intervention Teams' interaction between
law enforcement and individuals with mental illness. The plan is to include all the police
agencies in the State of Colorado, which are estimated to be in the tens of thousands.
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About the developer |
George Elder has been an Iron Speed Designer developer for five years. He has an extensive technical
background including a BS in Behavior Science, and a post-graduate degree in Information Systems. George
holds technical certifications from law enforcement and the military in the areas of cyber-terrorism,
computer forensics, investigation, and aviation technology. He is also a former military helicopter pilot.
He is well-versed in the following technologies: VB.Net, C#, HTML, Java, Enterprise JavaBeans, JavaScript,
VBScript, SQL, QuickBooks, C++, and CCS.
For the last 15 years, he has developed financial applications for QuickBooks integration. He has also
built financial applications for brokers who have unique trading methods. More recently, he has provided
services to government entities, which range from record management to computer crimes.
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