SPECIAL TO THE REPORTER

Alabaster-based Forte&8217; Incorporated recently announced it has been recognized as a winner of the 2007 MS-HUG (Microsoft Healthcare Users Group) Annual Innovation Awards in the category of Interoperability. The winners were announced at the HIMSS Annual Conference and Exposition in New Orleans, La., on Feb. 27.

Forte&8217; is a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner specializing in custom software and database design and development. The firm&8217;s LifeTrac project, developed for Birmingham Regional Emergency Medical Services System (BREMSS), was presented to the award selection committee for consideration.

This project as an example of how intelligent software designs, utilizing Microsoft technologies, can save lives, time and money for critical trauma and stroke patients, EMS providers and hospitals.

&8220;We are delighted to have been selected for this honor. This award recognizes our team&8217;s expertise in using Microsoft tools and platforms to not only save money, but save lives,&8221; said Glenn S. Phillips, Forte&8217; president.

Stroke is the third-leading cause of death and the leading cause of disability in the United States, while trauma is the fourth-leading cause of death. Rapid, appropriate treatment significantly improves the odds of survival for these patients.

Across the country, emergency patients are often transported to hospitals based on location with little regard to how appropriate a hospital is for that patient or to the availability of all necessary treatment resources. This problem is multiplied in a mass casualty incident or evacuation.

The LifeTrac system in Birmingham is a unique wide-area computer network that shares data between hospital emergency rooms, a central communication center, paramedics in the field and other related entities. The system helps route critical trauma and stroke patients to the most appropriate and immediately available hospital emergency departments.

The system supports mass casualty incidents. Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital credit the BREMSS Trauma System with reducing the death rate of severe trauma in central Alabama by 12 percent