A solution to support PTSD research

A solution to support PTSD research The U.S. Army Records Management and Declassification Agency (RMDA) provides oversight for the Army’s records management program. It also establishes programs for records collection, and operates and sustains the Army electronic archive.

The RMDA’s information infrastructure also supports the research efforts of the Joint Services Records Research Center (JSRRC) in Washington, D.C., which serves as the executive agent for matters pertaining to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) claims and Agent Orange research. The JSRRC has been responding to veteran claims and initiatives since 1980, and receives an increasing number of such claims each year.

To support the PTSD research, the RMDA needed to provide easy access to millions of records, as well as document classification and system scalability. It chose a technology solution comprised of Concept Searching’s conceptSearch, conceptClassifier and conceptTaxonomyManager, integrated with COMPU-DATA’s repository management product, DigitalAsset Finder (DAF).

Concept Searching reports that with the solution, users can search-- from one interface--more than 20 different data sources, which were previously scattered among multiple file shares, spreadsheets and databases. Taxonomies were built to ensure classification and identification of data records, and document templates were configured to support the numerous document types that existed in the collection.

With the new system, the RMDA can easily load millions of records and automatically classify them against multiple taxonomies simultaneously, while having the ability to expand the system configuration through scalable architecture, according to Concept Searching.

The solution is said to have benefited the RMDA by providing: centralized data standardization, increased findability, terabyte size data store support, increased productivity and scalability.