Pittsburgh, PA — KIT Solutions, LLC, a Pittsburgh-based provider of real-time, data-driven decision support services for human services organizations, was designated the vendor of choice to host, maintain, and support the management of the data for the Pennsylvania Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Programs’ (BDAP) prevention programs.
KIT’s prevention service is a statewide, Web-based service that facilitates substance abuse prevention-program funding and outcomes data management at the community and county level. With the aggregated data, state-level decision makers can determine which programs are most effective and therefore properly allocate funding.
In 1997, Pennsylvania BDAP became KIT’s first client when it chose KIT Solutions as its decision support software provider. Web-based solutions for managing social services program data had not been developed at the time, so KIT originally licensed the software to Pennsylvania to host at individual human services agencies.
As KIT’s prevention service evolved to become Web-based, the number of states using the service has grown to 16, and those states have formed a learning community. Under this model, KIT, unlike other technology solution companies, modifies its product at no cost based on the collective intelligence of the learning community.
Determining that KIT’s Web-based software solution and the learning community concept were of great value, Pennsylvania contracted with KIT to use its Web-based prevention service. Now KIT is able to incorporate all desired changes adopted from the learning community into the Pennsylvania system.
As well, Pennsylvania BDAP is integrating substance abuse prevention data from the National Guard into its prevention program. The National Guard in every state is tasked with drug and alcohol prevention services, and the Pennsylvania experience will be of value to others in the learning community.
KIT Solutions’ retention of the Pennsylvania BDAP reflects several factors. Cloud computing is becoming an industry accepted standard, unlike more than a decade ago when the first KIT prevention system was developed for Pennsylvania. As well, the superior support can be provided less expensively than a state can do in-house, as verified by independent third parties completing feasibility studies.
“Since KIT has excellent collective intelligence and knowledge of a multi-state learning community, a collaborative partnership with Pennsylvania makes great sense,” said Xiaoyan Zhang, KIT Solutions’ President and CEO. “KIT can better support the applications, hosting and maintenance of the services that are necessary to most effectively manage data for human services agencies, as well as continually enhance the product, than the state alone. This is because of our complete focus on the applications that we develop.”
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