Case Study: New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation achieves rapid identification of 200 at-risk children during a salmonella outbreak with InterSystems Ensemble

Ensemble Helps Win Race Against Disease Outbreak

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), the largest municipal hospital system in the U.S. serving 1.3 million people across 11 acute-care hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and 80+ community clinics, faced a public‑health challenge when a salmonella outbreak occurred elsewhere. The New York City Department of Health wanted to proactively identify and notify at‑risk children in NYC rather than wait for illnesses to appear, which required rapid, system‑wide access to live patient data across many disparate facilities.

HHC implemented an InterSystems Ensemble–based integration solution (built with partner J2 Interactive) that continuously ingests HL7 ADT messages, aggregates them into patient‑centric records, and stores them in a high‑performance embedded database. Within hours the DOH had a list of about 200 children aged 1–4 to contact and screen; the same Ensemble system now supports real‑time biosurveillance and web‑based ad hoc reporting and analysis across the HHC network.

New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation