Overview
Rhode Island Port Security Communications Network
The Business Innovation Factory (BIF) has partnered in a unique port security communications demonstration project funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Under a contract awarded to Smiths Detection Systems, BIF will partner with a team of communications and security experts, including Raytheon, Stonecrop Technologies, and Newport-based LiveWave, to create a wireless broadband communications network. The network will allow government agencies and emergency personnel to share and distribute and use real-time text, voice, and video data in Narragansett Bay.
History
Why Port Security?
The State of Rhode Island has identified the need to establish a seamless discrete and secure broadband wireless communications network for waterborne first responders that allows the distribution and use of sensitive information via text, voice, data, and video during the course of their daily operations as well as in emergency situations.
The Rhode Island Port Security Communications Network (PSCN) was created as a demonstration project funded by the US Department of Homeland Security's Office for Domestic Preparedness. The project will design, implement and demonstrate a Port Security Communications Network to operate on Narragansett Bay and interconnect with related federal, state and municipal land based communications networks.
The PSCN is a collaborative project of the RI Emergency Management Agency (EMA), the RI Economic Development Corporation (EDC), the RI Department of Environmental Management (DEM), and RI Department of Administration (DOA).
After soliciting bids from contractors across the country, PSCN selected Maryland-based Smiths Detection to lead the network construction. Smiths has partnered with the Business Innovation Factory, Newport-based LiveWave, Raytheon, and Stonecrop Technologies, to build and implement the network.
The network is expected to be up and running later this year, with full testing and evaluation in early 2006.
High Points
Rhode Island as Proof of Concept State
When the Department of Homeland Security's Information Technology and Evaluation Program was looking for locations to prototype a wireless telecommunications network for port security, it selected Narragansett Bay as a pilot site. The system will include a mesh-enabled network of text, voice, bulk data and video infrastructure embedded along the federal shipping channel in Narragansett Bay.
A great strength of Rhode Island's bid to pilot a wireless port security project was the state's unique ability to create and coordinate an expansive network of partners, including federal, state and municipal public safety agencies operating on Narragansett Bay, as well as the Northeast Marine Pilots. Rhode Island's size and accessible legislative and leadership networks enable the systematic interagency cooperation necessary to develop, demonstrate, maintain, and monitor a port security system of this kind.
For example, the RI Turnpike & Bridge Authority will facilitate the installation of antennas on bridges, the USCG will place communications equipment on its vessels, and the RIDEM will evaluate and demonstrate the network. Additional companies also may be tapped for the project, as more than 100 businesses in Rhode Island already support the U.S. Department of Defense, with services ranging from engineering sophisticated submarine combat systems to the manufacturing of various military supplies.
Results
Setting the Standard
As a key beta site, Rhode Island will demonstrate new port security technologies with the potential for nationwide application. After the one-year project is complete, the State's ability to mobilize contingencies to move swiftly toward a new model of emergency response will set the standard by which other port security communication approaches are measured.
Rhode Island's size and defense expertise made it an ideal location for a prototype wireless telecommunications network for port security. Upon completion, Rhode Island will gain attention on the world stage as a place where industry and government convened to create an unprecedented system to mitigate and respond to security risks.
Reinventing Primary Care
In 2006, the Business Innovation Factory launched our Primary Care Practice of the Future project.
Our goal was simple but ambitious. How do we help people, from young to old, to be healthier, and more satisfied with their health care experiences, without accelerating health care costs?
We believed the answer could be found at the front line of health care – in the relationships between patients and their family doctors, pediatricians, and geriatricians. These health care professionals face the "hot topics" of health first hand on a daily basis.
They tackle the rising tide of chronic diseases like diabetes and asthma, and lifestyle diseases like obesity and smoking.
They help their patients deal with the complex relationships between physical sickness and depression.
They assist families in understanding a range of issues, from health and wellness to caring for a loved one as they near the end.
And they do all these things at a lower cost-per-patient than specialists or hospitals.
But healthcare experts agree that primary care can't deliver on these promises as it is currently put together, paid for, and delivered.
There are some who warn of a crisis in primary care, of doctors leaving family practice for financial reasons, a shortage of new doctors entering the field, and a growing disconnect between the health needs of patients, and the resources of family doctors.
We could see that both the way primary care is delivered, and the way the surrounding systems interact and support it must change. The question is…how?
An Experience Lab project starts by centering on the customer experience. In summer 2006 the Business Innovation Factory put together an team of experts in understanding and designing customer experiences.
This team went into family physician offices and clinics across the state, to understand primary care from the perspective of the patient.
We interviewed patients about what was important in their doctor relationships, what role these played in how they approached their health, and what would support them in making better health decisions.
We also interviewed doctors, nurses, and office administrators about what worked for them, the pressures that keep them from delivering better care, and their dreams for how it "should" work.
What people do is more important than what they say, so we complemented our interviews with photo and video recording of the patient's experience of primary care.
What did we find out?
First, the biggest factor in patient health is not the doctor, but the patient, and the choices they make, and how they approach their health and wellness. To dramatically improve patient health, doctors must find ways to influence behavior. We live in a world where consumers have more complex information and advice available on health than ever before. The family doctor can play a crucial role in helping navigate this information.
Today's system rewards a focus on treating, curing or managing disease, whether it be strep throat or diabetes. Tomorrow's system will reward a focus on the patient, and helping them to be healthy, physically, mentally and emotionally.
Primary care is not about a piece of equipment or a fancy office. It is primarily about the relationship between the patient and the doctor, built around trust, valued information and empathy spanning many stages of a person's life and health.
When these relationships are strong, patients are more likely to visit their doctor and follow their health advice.
We combined all of this information together into a design process centered around the customer, the patient, to create the Customer-Driven Care model.
In 2007 BIF will combine Customer-Driven Care with several national models to design and launch the Primary Care Practice of the Future, with real doctors serving real patients in a totally transformed way.
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