Case Study: State of Rhode Island improves COVID-19 public health response with IBM Consulting

IBM Consulting helps Rhode Island enhance its public health response

The State of Rhode Island faced major operational challenges at the start of COVID-19, relying on paper, fax machines, and limited electronic systems to manage rising case numbers, testing, contact tracing, and public inquiries. To support its public health response, Rhode Island brought in IBM Consulting and IBM watsonx Assistant.

IBM helped the state rapidly modernize operations by standing up a K–12 testing call center, a specialty case investigation and contact tracing team, and a virtual assistant named RHODA, all integrated with Salesforce. IBM also applied IBM Garage methods and analytics to improve processes and scale resources quickly, helping Rhode Island respond to 80% of positive cases within 24 hours, increase case investigation throughput fivefold, and handle more than 100,000 RHODA chat conversations.

State of Rhode Island

Courtney Hawkins

Former Director of the Department of Human Services