(Alexandria, VA) - May 20, 2008 - East Idaho Public Health District has implemented the Previstar Continual Preparedness System (CPS) to enhance their preparedness and response capabilities. East District is part of Idaho's seven public heath districts which are critical partners in preparedness. The statewide CPS deployment will help the districts coordinate plans, response actions, resource visibility and other components of NIMS such as command management and preparedness. Idaho's South Central Health District is scheduled for CPS implementation in June of 2008.

The district installed Previstar's latest software release, CPS 5.1. The new release includes CPS 5.0 current suite of planning, response, and recovery capabilities, but now users can customize their user interface based on organizational and ICS roles, enable CPS server-to-server information sharing, utilize CAP messaging, and have more streamlined resource management.

Tammy Cox, Director, Health Preparedness, Promotion, and Surveillance was part of a team that studied a range of software offerings before determining that Previstar was the partner of choice. "It took us two years to find the right software. The selection process was sometimes frustrating, but we needed a system that could accommodate our needs as a public health department."

"We found Previstar most easy to use, able to support the public health mission, and help us better track all our critical information such as resources procured by ASPR grants and also our medical reserve corps. In the past, the ability to search for information became frustrating because it required sorting through multiple places such as spreadsheets and databases. Additionally, even after we found the data, it was not always current or consistent from database to database."

Previstar CPS' suite of preparedness capabilities equipped the district's organizational roles with automated tools that collect, organize, and align critical information into a searchable, interrelational database.

"Previstar helps us track all of our resources in a single location," said Tammy. "Their planning capabilities make it easy to add the information into the system. We currently track our medical reserve corps, antiviral stockpile, staff, teams, plans, and documents. We also receive automatic notifications when resource expiration dates are close to expire or our personnel need recertification."

"From an Incident Command standpoint, we use Previstar CPS communicate real time messages and status reports and coordinate between command, operations, and logistics. We had originally tried to use email but found it too cumbersome, and not geared to meet the complexities of managing an operation. "

Training was provided to 16 personnel from the District and consisted of both administrator and user training. Marilyn Anderson, Training Coordinator, said that Previstar training was "thorough, entertaining, and the staff really grasped why they needed to use the system. It helped bolster the incident command training we had previously received, and it also led to great brain storming sessions on how we could use the software to meet future objectives."

About Idaho Public Health

Idaho is the country's first Project Public Health Ready (PPHR) state. PPHR is a national recognition awarded jointly by the NACCHO and the CDC to organizations that meet requirements in emergency preparedness, workforce competency development, and demonstration of all-hazards readiness through exercises.

About Previstar

Previstar provides emergency preparedness and response communities, the armed services, and homeland security industry a suite of highly customizable software capabilities for managing the incident lifecycle. These capabilities enhance situational awareness, strategic decision support, and enhanced tactical execution for planning, response, and recovery.

Previstar's suite of products originated from the Department of Energy's Oakridge National Laboratories and offers the only solution that equips all organizational roles, functions, and ICS roles with a mix of customizable tools for enhancing operational effectiveness and organizational alignment, both day-to-day and during live incidents.

DOD organizations, Emergency managers, Health organizations, and first responders have used Previstar to prepare for bioterrorism attacks, safeguard the Salt Lake City Olympics, connect state health agencies, and recover from the multiple 2004 Florida hurricanes and hurricane Katrina.

Previstar is headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia and conducts research and development activities at its facility in Knoxville, Tennessee.

For more information about Previstar, please visit our website at www.previstar.com or contact: Joe Gordon, AVP Sales & Marketing Support, joe.gordon@previstar.com, 813-244-7774.