State of Idaho Department of Health and Welfare Selects Corticon as Business Rules Engine Standard

Redwood City, CA (PRWEB) December 15, 2010

The State of Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (DHW) has selected Corticon Technologies to provide their enterprise standard business rules engine. Corticon’s software will be used by Idaho DHW to provide faster and more efficient social services, while also improving service quality. This is achieved by automating the rules, regulations, and best practices that govern benefits determination, needs assessment and service delivery.

Idaho DHW focuses on the health, safety, and self-sufficiency of Idahoan individuals and families. DHW provides services in the form of benefits programs such as health care, cash assistance, food stamps, nutritional assistance, foster care and child protection. Recently, an ailing economy has created an influx of citizens in need. Currently, DHW serves the 1.5 million citizens of Idaho, of which nearly one in four citizens require services. Record enrollment, combined with lower tax revenue, has created a crises situation, overloading social service personnel. Fortunately, Corticon can help.

Idaho intends to use Corticon to automate regulated, rules-driven processes such as benefits determination and needs assessment. The Corticon-powered solutions will help Idaho’s social workers more effectively manage the increased workload, while simultaneously improving quality of service via better adherence to federal regulations and best practices. Corticon will be used both to replace aging, inflexible, legacy technology, as well as to automate manual tasks. According to Mike Wickham, Bureau Chief, Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, "Almost everything that we do is heavily driven by business rules, mandated by federal regulations that define our social service programs. Corticon’s rules engine will make our business rules more visible and accessible to the business, but also more responsive to the changes that come from either state or federal regulations."

Idaho plans to first implement Corticon as a part of their WIC system replacement. WIC refers to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, a Federal assistance program of the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). WIC provides nutrition assistance for low-income pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and infants and children under the age of five.

Idaho's WIC program has expanded dramatically in recent years, from 62,000 citizens in 2006, to 82,254 citizens in 2010. This growth has overwhelmed their social workers. Their existing legacy WIC system, which minimally supported the process, was too inflexible to change. Thus, Idaho decided to replace their WIC system.

After evaluating a number of WIC systems at other states, Idaho decided to build their own, using Corticon as the rules engine. The new solution is expected to significantly improve their social workers’ productivity, by helping to automate the process of certification (i.e. eligibility), needs assessment, and food package selection. The new WIC system will provide faster service to citizens, while also improving service quality via better adherence to federal regulations and best practices.

Idaho DHW chose Corticon as their enterprise standard rules engine after a lengthy evaluation process. After evaluating several products, and working with a rules engine product as a part of an existing system, Idaho recognized Corticon as providing a true breakthrough in ease-of-use. “Most products require learning multiple tools and languages to do what Corticon could do with a single, business-friendly tool,” said Vickie Flatt, Project Manager at Idaho DHW. This ease-of-use results in several benefits. First, new systems can be developed and modified far more quickly. Second, with Corticon, all rules are transparent to business people, ensuring that the rules are easier to understand, validate and change. Third, with Corticon, it is far faster and easier to train new resources, including business people, to build and maintain rules.

"We proved that Corticon can significantly reduce the overhead to create and maintain business rules," said Mr. Wickham. "We are embracing Corticon as an enterprise standard and see the opportunity to put the rules engine in many other areas of our business."

"Corticon is pleased to partner with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare to provide more efficient and responsive benefits systems," said Dr. Mark Allen, CEO of Corticon. "We look forward to helping Idaho to better serve the needs of their citizens."

About Business Rules Engines

Business rules engines (BRE), also known as business rules management systems (BRMS) , are an advanced technology used to deliver more agile IT systems (see http://www.corticon.com/Products/). Business rules engines enable the business logic of software applications to be externalized from programming code and managed by subject matter experts. Business rules engines provide a number of key advantages such as accelerated application development and maintenance, increased business transparency and control, and improved audit-ability. In addition, they enable the automation of sophisticated operational decisions that are too complex and volatile to automate via traditional programming techniques.

About the State of Idaho Department of Health and Welfare

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare's programs and services are designed to help people live healthy and be productive, strengthening individuals, families and communities. From birth throughout life, we help people improve their lives. We deal with complex social, economic and health issues. We receive requests every day for assistance with food or medical insurance. We help others with child care, child support and substance abuse problems. Throughout the state, we are at the forefront of protecting public health. We help people help themselves. Our goal is to help people become self-reliant, working with them to identify issues and solutions to their problems so they won't need future assistance from us. Idaho's health and human services are a partnership. We team with other agencies and human service providers to meet the needs in each community. Working together, we can build a better Idaho.

About Corticon

Corticon is the leading independent provider of business rules engines, used to automate decision making processes with unprecedented agility and business control. Corticon is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, California, with European headquarters in The Netherlands, worldwide distribution through local Corticon offices, and an extensive partner network. Corticon's products are in use today at many of the world's largest banks, insurance companies, media companies, telecommunication providers and government organizations, collectively automating millions of decisions per day.

# # #

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/Corticon/Idaho/prweb4897404.htm