JACKSON, MS – The University of Mississippi Medical Center is implementing software that will help it keep track of health incidents and diseases. Other facilities in the state eventually will be able to use the application to improve health reporting.

The state-operated facility is implementing software from TheraDoc, a Salt Lake City-based company whose product aggregates data from different information systems and then analyzes it to find trends.

The facility hopes to have the TheraDoc system running by June, said Raphael L. Nolan, professor of medicine at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine and epidemiologist at the hospital.

A few months after that, a version of the application will be made available to other Mississippi hospitals, many of which are small and located in rural areas. The lack of automation at small hospitals has hurt health-reporting initiatives, Nolan said.

"The system becomes really cumbersome for them," he said. "It requires the participation of infection control staff at smaller hospitals, and they're usually wearing several hats."

The state's department of health saw the possibilities of using the software to improve statewide reporting, said Stan Pestotnik, TheraDoc's president.

"It's a near impossibility for the state to do something like this," he said. "The advantage we bring is that reporting is all in real time."

The TheraDoc application will automate what's currently a manual process at the hospital, Nolan said. It also will assist efforts to build a database of adverse drug events at the facility, he said.Statewide reporting can enable syndromic surveillance that will help identify trends such as the emergence of bacteria resistant to antibiotic treatment, he said. While that's well documented at large urban facilities, there's not been enough data to track the trend at small rural hospitals.

The software initially will enable a one-way feed of data to the state. Pestotnik said the system could be adapted to provide reports back to providers.