What is the Michigan Health Alert Network?
The Michigan Health Alert Network (MIHAN) is a secure, Internet-based, emergency notification system. Each person who participates in MIHAN specifies up to five methods of contact for each of the three priority levels of alerts. Alerts may be sent out as high, medium or low priority. The system uses a text to speech engine to call people as they have specified in their individual alerting profile. For example, a person may specify that they only wish to receive low priority alerts by E-mail, medium priority alerts via E-mail or cell phone and high priority alerts at home, work, cell phone and E-mail. Alerts received by phone are preceded by a standard introduction. Then the recipient is asked to enter their security code to hear the actual content of the alert.

How are Alerts Distributed?
The MIHAN system uses an innovative, role based directory for selection of those to be notified. This directory is geographically based on Michigan's eight emergency preparedness regions and the counties, which comprise those regions. The role structure consists of public health, healthcare and many additional groups like emergency managers and life support roles. This role-based directory eliminates the need to know the specific name of a person that performs a particular job function within a county. The alerting directory also provides a means of selecting role groups for quickly alerting sets of roles statewide.

How is contact information kept up-to-date?
Individual users maintain their own personal contact information within the MIHAN system. If an individual has not logged onto the system in ninety days, they receive a reminder to update their profile. After sending alerts, users can generate reports that indicate whether or not the alert was confirmed, by whom, and at what time. This reporting tool allows additional quality control for personal contact information and account configuration.

Who can participate?
The MIHAN contains over 4,000 participants from each of the local health departments, hospitals, clinics and many other critical first responders across the state. It also includes many of Michigan's state governmental agencies. Specific roles which have prescribed duties for response to incidents have the ability to alert a wide range of participants on the system.

What is the Document Library?
The MIHAN system includes a useful document collaboration tool called the Document Library. MIHAN participants that can send alerts also have access to the Document Library. This feature allows participants to work on the development of a single document without having to E-mail multiple copies to members of a group and resolve each change or version. Individuals with specific roles can also post detailed information about an alert to the Alert Details Section of the MIHAN home page. The subscription feature provides automatic E-mail notification when a document is published. Additionally, there is an approval routing mechanism that can be utilized so documents can be reviewed and approved prior to being published.

MIHAN Support Staff

Bill Colville
MIHAN Project Coordinator &
State Support
Email: ColvilleB@michigan.gov

Al Florey
Quality Assurance
Regions 2N, 2S, 5 & 8 Support Staff
Email: AFlorey@mphi.org

Craig Henry
Content Manager
Regions 1, 3, 6 & 7 Support Staff
Email: HenryC1@michigan.gov

Brook Babcock
Technical Support Staff & Planning Analyst
Email: BabcockBr@michigan.gov