SBIR-STTR Award

This is a project to test the technical and financial feasibility of a commercial version of ACCESS, an information base and report generating system. It was developed by Levine Associates, Inc. under contract for the Health Services Administration. The commercial version, to be called the U.S. Health Data System, will be designed to provide a fee-forservice operation which will allow any private or government subscriber the ability to access and perform analysis on current national health data.Division of Research Resources

This research project will develop a user-friendly health statistics reporting system based on the extensive body of federally collected health data that is available and rarely used commercially. The data files will bring together data from many sources and create estimates of items not directly reported in, but implied by, the material in those sources, such as hospital costs by diagnostic related groups (DRG), so as to make this vital data available to the general public. The data base maintenance and statistics reporting will be implemented through a data base management system (DBMS). The resulting data set will be highly transportable so that it can be made available to potential users through secondary distribution channels, such as health provider association data systems. The data base will also be available on 9-track tape, and portions of it will be available in printed form in a data book. The basic system, though, will operate interactively. Consulting and training support will be provided. The tasks involved in completing this work are: data base design and preparation, selection of a DBMS and creation of the data base; development of reporting softare within the DBMS; system testing and refinement; and development of distribution and financing arrangements. Division Of Research Resources