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	LA County DHS wins National Association of Counties 2003 Achievement Award for Communicable Disease Tracking System LOS ANGELES, CA. (July 20, 2003) – On July 15, 2003, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (DHS) announced that the National Association of Counties (NACo) has awarded a 2003 NACo Achievement Award to the county health department for its “Visual Confidential Morbidity Report (CMR). As part of the briefing, County DHS demonstrated this innovative electronic reporting system for communicable diseases, which was developed with private software company Atlas Development Corporation, of Woodland Hills, CA. CMR has dramatically improved the health department’s ability to manage disease and outbreak investigations by allowing laboratories to report diseases electronically and by facilitating Internet-based reporting of disease incidents by hospital infection control practitioners. Creating this technological infrastructure to handle the reporting of more than 80 diseases and conditions (e.g. foodborne illnesses or sexually transmitted diseases) that are mandated by law to be reported to the health department increases the health department’s capacity to handle other emerging public health threats such as SARS or West Nile Virus. Health department officials briefly demonstrated how a public health worker would use the system for disease tracking. At the same time, County officials and representatives of Atlas described their partnership. Under the terms of the development agreement, LA County has retained ownership of the CMR system, while Atlas has been granted the exclusive right to market the software on the County’s behalf. The County will receive royalties from the sale that will be used to further enhance the CMR system. Back to top Home | CMR HTML Demo | Contact Us