Policy & Practice | August 2019

MD THINK is an innovative, futuristic, and highly ambitious cloud-based technology platform that will revolutionize health and human services delivery for the residents of Maryland.

The MD THINK program will eventually improve the lives of approx- imately two million Marylanders. The Long-Term Care Program’s electronic application share has already spiked to 67 percent—reducing manual pro- cessing and increasing efficiency for faster eligibility determination. The Back Story In the spring of 2015, violent riots rocked the city of Baltimore after a 25-year-old African American man named Freddie Gray died from injuries sustained while in police custody. His death spurred peaceful protests, but those protests soon turned to unrest, and unrest turned to violence. Thousands of police and Maryland National Guard troops were deployed, but in the end, more than 20 police officers were injured, nearly 250 arrests were made, and hundreds of businesses and building were damaged, looted, or burned. As the state worked to deliver aid to those affected, it became clear that Maryland had no effective system to share or coordinate citizens’ data across state agencies. Coordination and cooperation would more efficiently direct resources to help those who needed it the most. This prompted state leaders to advocate for an integrated

The first program of its kind in the nation, the MD THINK (Maryland Total Human Services Integrated Network) shared services platform will be available to the applications of various state agencies, which will allow them to consolidate and unify common services while continuing to provide the benefits that are unique to each application and agency. This enterprise model of the state-provided Platform as a Service (PaaS) will lead to more efficient service delivery and significant cost avoidance. Currently in the second year of oper- ation, a major application is already live on the platform, as well as the data management service layer. The MD THINK shared services platform allows customers to access all health and human services options via a common portal where they can easily upload supporting documents and enroll in benefits. Customers also enjoy shorter turnaround times for eligibility deter- mination and enrollment, as well as more efficient document handling and reporting. Additionally, MD THINK enables improved system performance and higher data fidelity that substan- tially reduces data fraud, waste, and abuse. Each beneficiary may access the services they truly qualify for using the latest in technology available.

August 2019   Policy&Practice 21