The Florida House of Representatives IT Budget and Policy Subcommittee recently met to discuss several agencies’ cloud modernization efforts, including the Florida Department of Health (DOH).
Antonio Dawkins, the department’s deputy secretary of operations, spoke for the agency, detailing some of its latest work regarding cloud modernization, which primarily focused on three projects.
“The Florida Department of Health was appropriated multiyear funding of $18.85 million to support cloud modernization projects. The department identified our health management system and Child Protection Team Information System for improvements and a need to assess our hosted applications at the state data center for modernization,” Dawkins said.
The department’s health management system is a mission-critical electronic health record system deployed in all 67 county health departments to execute administrative functions and clinical management services.
“The system was originally developed 19 years ago with independent databases for each of the 67 county health departments,” Dawkins explained. “This project will update the database and application to accommodate a cloud-hosted solution, unify state patient records and improve continuity of care efficiency and operations and security.”
The department started working on the six-phase project in January 2024. It has completed the first two phases and anticipates completing all phases by February 2026. The final phases will include a pilot and final migration to a central instance of the system, with scheduled completion sometime in December.
The Child Protection Team Information System is “a mission-critical application that was created over 20 years ago. This system supports case management activities of our department’s Child Protection Team and sexual abuse treatment programs that supplement investigation activities for the Department of Children and Families in cases of child abuse and neglect,” Dawkins said.
The project’s goal is to re-architect and rewrite the application in a modern, cloud-based solution with a client-centered approach that’s secure, scalable and operable. The project began in March 2024 and is in the design phase, which should conclude this month.
Last, the department is developing a strategic road map that includes technical details, a timeline and cost estimates for migrating the remaining inventory of the department’s applications hosted at the state data center to a modern, cloud-based technology.
“We plan to kick off this project in April and estimate up to 15 months to complete,” Dawkins said. “Currently, we’re procuring the resources and expect to make a selection by the end of this month.”
The department spent close to $750,000 on the health management system project, according to Dawkins. The department expects to spend a little more than $8.3 million this fiscal year on three projects, which would account for 44 percent of the total appropriation.
Overall, he added, “these projects will help modernize critical applications in our service delivery.”
Department of Health Briefs Lawmakers on Cloud Modernization
During a recent hearing of the Florida House of Representatives IT Budget and Policy Subcommittee, lawmakers discussed several agencies’ modernization plans, including the Department of Health.
