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. 2021 Aug 30;9(8):e23219.
doi: 10.2196/23219.

A System to Support Diverse Social Program Management

Mollie McKillop  1 , Jane Snowdon  1 , Van C Willis  1 , Shira Alevy  1 , Rubina Rizvi  1 , Karen Rewalt  1 , Charlyne Lefebvre-Paillé  1 , William Kassler  1 , Gretchen Purcell Jackson  1   2
Affiliations

A System to Support Diverse Social Program Management

Mollie McKillop et al. JMIR Med Inform. .

Abstract

Background: Social programs are services provided by governments, nonprofits, and other organizations to help improve the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities. Social programs aim to deliver services effectively and efficiently, but they are challenged by information silos, limited resources, and the need to deliver frequently changing mandated benefits.

Objective: We aim to explore how an information system designed for social programs helps deliver services effectively and efficiently across diverse programs.

Methods: This viewpoint describes the configurable and modular architecture of Social Program Management (SPM), a system to support efficient and effective delivery of services through a wide range of social programs and lessons learned from implementing SPM across diverse settings. We explored usage data to inform the engagement and impact of SPM on the efficient and effective delivery of services.

Results: The features and functionalities of SPM seem to support the goals of social programs. We found that SPM provides fundamental management processes and configurable program-specific components to support social program administration; has been used by more than 280,000 caseworkers serving more than 30 million people in 13 countries; contains features designed to meet specific user requirements; supports secure information sharing and collaboration through data standardization and aggregation; and offers configurability and flexibility, which are important for digital transformation and organizational change.

Conclusions: SPM is a user-centered, configurable, and flexible system for managing social program workflows.

Keywords: consumer health informatics; other clinical informatics applications; process management tools; public health; requirements analysis and design.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: The authors of this manuscript are employed by IBM.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Scope of services supported by Social Program Management. Social Program Management serves health and social service organizations at all levels of government and nonprofit organizations.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Social Program Management design. Social Program Management provides core processing and infrastructure components for social program management through its platform. Business services provide support for management needs common across all types of organizations. Modules complement the system platform and provide additional functionality and system configurability.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Worldwide usage of Social Program Management.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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