The Processing and Research Information System for Mortality-data was developed for the research and analysis of the Cause of Death Study, which forms an important part of the various faculties of research, being carried out at The Institute of Health Systems (IHS). The application utility covers a wide range of user requirements and also enables functionality using several data sources. PRISM is developed using Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 as the front end, with MSAccess platform as the data source. It can however utilize data sources like SQL Server as well. This software has the capability to import data from platforms like Fox Pro databases and also from medical software like EPI Info, developed by the World Health Organization, Geneva.

PRISM is currently being used for the Cause of Death study of Andhra Pradesh, and forms a major part of Global Burden of Disease Study, a WHO project. Due to its capacity of functionality across various platforms, it is not localized to the requirements of a particular organization. On the contrary, it is generalized to suit the needs of any organization, dealing in the Cause of Death Study.

PRISM utilizes 96 forms and 39 modules designed in VB 6.0, and also incorporates the use of a Dynamic Link Library (DLL) called IHSVBLib.DLL, developed at IHS itself. It is comprised of sections like Dictionary Maintenance, Acquiring Data, Investigation of Data, Review of Records, Statistics Generation, Report Generation according to RGI Format and various Age-Groups and Online Help, which span across several menu items in the application. It also incorporates the decentralized mode of operation, where it can be used by various users, generating statistics, printing reports or inputting data to the same database, stored centrally in the IHSNet Server.

The most significant feature of this software, is the inter-connectivity between several modules, wherein a user can switch to a different module with various criteria specified in one module. The software also enables the generation of other applications, which can be copied to floppies and installed on other machines. PRISM can be installed either directly through floppies on any machine, or the IHSNet Server can be accessed for an Online installation of the Software.

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Updated on 10/03/2002 by VijayKarthik