North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) manages the delivery of health- and human-related services for all North Carolinians, especially its most vulnerable citizens—children, elderly, disabled, and low-income families. The Department works closely with health care professionals, community leaders and advocacy groups; local, state and federal entities; and many other stakeholders to make this happen. The department is divided into 33 divisions and offices. NCDHHS divisions and offices fall under six broad service areas—health, opportunity and well-being, Medicaid, operational excellence, policy and communications, and health equity. NCDHHS also oversees 14 facilities: developmental centers, neuro-medical treatment centers, psychiatric hospitals, alcohol and drug abuse treatment centers, and two residential programs for children.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is an epicenter of information for the citizens of North Carolina. The amount of data that NCDHHS processes every day is staggering. Like most large organizations, NCDHHS’ data is spread out among many disparate systems which made data collection and reporting an arduous manual process. Data was painstakingly gathered from many systems in many different formats. Once collected, the data then needed to be manually cleaned, manually entered, and manually reported. And after all that effort, the data reported was not always the most up-to-date.

When the impacts of COVID-19 hit North Carolina, real-time COVID-19 metrics were needed to help inform decisions that would impact millions of North Carolinians’ lives. Within 48 hours, NCDHHS stood up the newly designed, forward-thinking, HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based solution: The Business Intelligence Data Platform (BIDP). For the first time in department history, data could automatically flow into one system from many data sources and then be quickly distributed to the masses. North Carolina leadership and citizens are now able to see up-to-date data and trends within the state. BIDP has also significantly reduced the resources that were once needed for NCDHHS’ data analytics and reporting. BIDP automatically processes and distributes data to support 10 NCDHHS COVID-19 dashboards showing COVID-related statistics, including vaccination data. Looking beyond the pandemic, BIDP is also being leveraged to support the data needs for many programs within the department. BIDP’s scalability, adaptability and ease of use has enhanced the way NCDHHS is able to serve its citizens, using more readily available data to support efforts which bring more equity and transparency to the delivery of health and human services in North Carolina.