The Alabama State Department of Education has selected InformationNOW Health, a comprehensive health record system from STI, which willl enable every school health professional in the state to access the critical information needed to provide students with high-quality care. InformationNOWHealth was rolled out during the 2010-11 school year to districts statewide as an integrated module within InformationNOW, the company’s Web-based student information system that is used throughout the Alabama public school system.
School nurses play a crucial role in the provision of comprehensive health services to children. The growing number of children entering school with chronic health conditions, the overwhelming amount of healthcare paperwork, and shrinking school budgets and staff leaves limited time and resources to provide students with the quality of care they deserve. InformationNOWHealth will help school health professionals access information anytime, anywhere to address the critical needs of students, and administer health services more efficiently and effectively.
“The Alabama State Department of Education, School Health Services, as well as K-12 public school nurses, are delighted to have InformationNOWHealth,” said State School Nurse Consultant Sherry D. Marbury, DNP, RN, CCRC. “One of the major priorities for the state was to develop and maintain a comprehensive health record system that would manage every aspect of student-related health data and information. STI worked closely with us to fill that need through a user-friendly, powerful tool that allows for in-depth reporting and analysis of health information.”
With InformationNOWHealth, schools can record and update student health information easily. The system tracks allergies, medications administered, immunizations, annual physical exams and screenings, nurse visitations, referrals, accidents, and more. Since InformationNOWHealth is integrated with InformationNOW, student information such as demographic data, emergency contacts, parent/guardian information, and attendance and discipline records, are automatically accessible to save time and ensure reliability of data.
The state of Alabama partners with STI as a single-source solution for its K-12 education data management needs. The outcome of this partnership is improved data accuracy and analysis, and informed, data-driven decisions that support and enhance student performance. Using one student information system across the state enables administrators to streamline and standardize data collection to minimize redundancy and errors, as well as to provide efficient, timely reporting from the classroom up to the state level.
InformationNOW is a Web-based student information system that provides a complete solution for student data collection, analysis, and reporting. This system is accessible through a customizable portal for each user, such as administrators, teachers, parents, and school health professionals. The system is based on best practices STI has developed over 25 years of experience in education data management, while also taking advantage of the latest technology. InformationNOW’s unique student identifier allows every school and district in the state and the Alabama State Department of Education to track a student continually throughout his/her entire school career. In addition, InformationNOW, which is SIF-compliant, links students to data elements and information that is often outside the scope of typical student information systems.
