Programs

• Assessment Initiative (AI)
• Biosurveillance
• Communities of Practice
• Directory, Alerting, and Emergency Operations
• Electronic Health Records
• External Workforce Development
• Knowledge Management
• Laboratory Systems
• National Notifiable Disease Surveillance
• Outbreak Management
• PHIN Certification
• Vocabulary/Messaging Standards
• Global Public Health Informatics
  
  

Biosurveillance

• Data acquisition;
• Data analysis and reporting;
• Situational Awareness; and,
• Public Health Response.

Currently BioSense:

• Supports more than 800 registered users;
• Connects with 570+ hospitals;
• Receives an average of 175,000 near real-time messages per hour;
• Receives data from 1300+ Department of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals and healthcare facilities; and,
• Receives laboratory data from LabCorp and RelayHealth.

BioSense Fact Sheet For more information about BioSense Click here

Communities of Practice

Fostering Collaboration & Innovation for PHIN: A PHIN Community of Practice (CoP) brings together members of the PHIN Community who have a common interest and common problems in a technical or functional area (domain) of PHIN. Members deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis (community) and collaborate to develop common and often innovative processes, practices, and tools (practice).

The PHIN Communities of Practice Program (CoPP) provides the leadership and resources to facilitate, communicate, educate, train, and support the PHIN CoPs within the PHIN Community and the associated PHIN Communities of Practice Council that provides guidance. The CoPP has been developed in response to public health partner requests that the PHIN community become more collaborative, with all PHIN partners having equal opportunities for shared decision making and shared development of the processes, tools, and practices that facilitate electronic information exchange within public health.

Communities of Practice Fact Sheet For more information about Communities of Practice Click here

For more information, please visit the Communities of Practice website at http://www.cdc.gov/phin/communities/

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Directory, Alerting, and Emergency Operations

The Directory, Alerting, and Emergency Operations Program houses projects focused on communications between Public Health professionals and information sharing about urgent health events. It is made up of the following projects:

• CDC Alerting;
• Epi-X (http://www.cdc.gov/phin/activities/applications-services/epi-x.html);
• HAN (http://www.cdc.gov/phin/activities/applications-services/han.html); and,
• PHIN Directory (http://www.cdc.gov/phin/activities/applications-services/phindir.html).

Directory, Alerting, and Emergency Operations Fact Sheet For more information about Directory, Alerting, and Emergency Operations Click here

Electronic Health Records

The purpose of this project is to leverage opportunities created through the increase use in EMR systems in healthcare organizations by creating the ability to send actionable public health alerts that can be consumed and distributed by an EMR system. This project explores extending the capability to communicate with EMR systems using a standard messaging format to create actionable alerts that will be delivered to the provider only when applicable to a current patient’s situation. By offering a targeted method of delivery, the project aims to avoid alert fatigue. A feedback mechanism will also be included to capture the provider’s response to the alert and further improve the effectiveness of the message.

The objectives of the Actionable Public Health Alerts for Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Systems project are as follows:

• To demonstrate the ability of a public health agency to generate an “actionable” public health alert that can be consumed by an EMR system;
• To determine if public health alerting systems can be leveraged to identify specific patients with risk factors related to the health condition identified in the alert;
• To demonstrate the transmission & integration of public health information into the clinical workflow;
• To demonstrate the effectiveness of a public-private collaborative to advance the practice of public health in the medical setting using non-traditional partners testing the capability in both commercial and open electronic health records systems;
• To evaluate the impact of the public health alert using qualitative measures on clinicians’ behaviors in response to receiving the alert; and,
• To determine if this functionality should be considered as criterion for EMR certification.

The EMR Alerting project presented a proof of concept demonstration at the 2009 HIMSS Conference. The project is currently working toward a demonstration at the 2009 PHIN Conference that will demonstrate expanded functionality of the alert repository and address possible future integration with other systems. The EMR Alerting solution will be piloted at a minimum of two locations in fall of 2009.

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External Workforce Development

The purpose of the External Workforce Development Program is to increase the public health informatics workforce. Through activities such as AMIA 10x10, Public Health Informatic Institute (PHII) workforce curriculum endeavor, and the PHIN Conference (http://www.cdc.gov/phinconference/), the program aims to ensure a skilled and competent public health workforce.

When fully formed and operational, this program will include projects focused on:

• Developing an informatics workforce pipeline through colleges and universities;
• Educating the existing public health workforce in core informatics competencies through a variety of mechanisms; and,
• Increasing the number of public health informaticians working in state and local public health.

External Workforce Development Fact Sheet For more information about External Workforce Development Click here

Knowledge Management

The Knowledge Management Program, through science and practice, aims to connect people to people and people to the public health knowledge they need to work better, find data/information faster, and improve public health decision making.

Areas of focus include Collaboration, Content Management, Decision Support, Clearance, and Web Operations.

The Program is made up of the following NCPHI projects:

• CDC.gov Web Operations;
• Documentum;
• eClearance;
• NCPHI Web;
• Public Access; and,
• WONDER.

Knowledge Management Fact Sheet For more information about Knowledge Management Click here

Laboratory Systems

The Laboratory Response Network (LRN) is a coordinated network of labs for which CDC provides the capability to test for biological and chemical terrorism agents. The charge was to create standard data exchange for the LRN where none existed before. To address this challenge the Program takes a two-fold approach:

• Fill immediate need using LRN Results Messenger (LRN RM); and,
• Work on long-term goals through LIMS Integration (LIMSi).

Projects in the Laboratory Systems Program include:

• ASTRO;
• LRN (http://www.cdc.gov/phin/activities/applications-services/lrn/index.html);
• PHLIP; and,
• STARRS/LUNA (http://www.cdc.gov/phin/activities/applications-services/luna.html).

Laboratory Systems Fact Sheet For more information about Laboratory Systems Click here

National Notifiable Disease Surveillance

The National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) is a state-based public health surveillance system for conditions designated by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) as nationally notifiable. Each week, provisional data sent by states and territories are error-checked, verified, aggregated, and published in tabular and graphical format in the MMWR. The NNDSS data also undergo an end-of-year data reconciliation and verification process and are published as finalized data in the MMWR Summary of Notifiable Diseases, United States. Weekly provisional NNDSS data are shared with CDC programs having prevention and control responsibility for specific nationally notifiable diseases. Finalized data are re-released to CDC programs and the public, under the terms of the NNDSS data release agreement, which was negotiated with CSTE in June 1996. For CDC programs, the NNDSS Link is a tool developed to query data within the NNDSS. This tool includes an aberration detection module and ad hoc query functionality.

Components include:

• PHIN Case Notification Messaging Guides and specifications;
• NEDSS Base System (NBS);
• NEDSS Messaging Solution;
• Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity Cooperative Agreement;
• Provision of COTS products to support disease surveillance (integration engine, patient de-duplication, geocoding);
• Supports the Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS) – case notification;
• Electronic Laboratory Results (ELR) Reporting and Case Reporting;
• A user community for the NBS and NMS; and,
• NEDSS Operational Workgroup.

National Notifiable Disease Surveillance Fact Sheet For more information about National Notifiable Disease Surveillance Click here

Outbreak Management

The Outbreak Management Program is made up of activities focused on dealing with outbreaks and enabling public health workers to manage the situation. It supports the CDC community health protection preparedness goal of “People prepared for emerging health threats,” and the Congressional Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 that established an integrated national system in support of terrorism response and prevention.

Projects in the Outbreak Management Program include:

• Countermeasure Inventory Tracking (http://www.cdc.gov/phin/activities/applications-services/cit/index.html);
• Countermeasure Response Administration (http://www.cdc.gov/phin/activities/applications-services/cra/index.html);
• Epi Info; and,
• Outbreak Management System.

Outbreak Management Fact Sheet For more information about Outbreak Management Click here

PHIN Certification

The PHIN Certification Program verifies that state and local public health departments have the capability to electronically exchange public health data across jurisdictional lines based on national standards of interoperability and data exchange. The PHIN Certification process uses program specific requirements for the evaluation of message structure and content, as well as security and data integrity. The two documents that govern the PHIN Certification process are PHIN Requirements v2.0 and PHIN Certification Process v1.0. Meeting PHIN Certification is currently a requirement of CDC’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) Cooperative Agreement, which funds 62 jurisdictions.

Components of this program include the following:

• Development and maintenance of PHIN Requirements (providing national standards for electronic exchange of public health data);
• Development and maintenance of PHIN Certification Criteria (measuring compliance of state and local partners in meeting PHIN Requirements);
• Refining of PHIN Data Exchange Standards (PHIN Message Mapping Guides) development and implementation processes within NCPHI and across CDC);
• Programmatic partnerships within CDC;
• Technical Assistance to 62 Public Health Emergency Preparedness Cooperative Agreement Grantees (state and local partners) to achieve PHIN Requirements; and,
• Objective assessment of 62 Public Health Emergency Preparedness Cooperative Agreement Grantees (state and local partners) ability to meet PHIN Certification Criteria.

PHIN Certification Fact Sheet For more information about PHIN Certification Click here

Vocabulary/Messaging Standards

PHIN Vocabulary Standards is a key component in supporting the development and deployment of standards-based public health information systems. PHIN Vocabulary Services seeks to promote the use of standards-based vocabulary within PHIN systems and foster the use and exchange of consistent information among public health partners. The use of PHIN Vocabulary Standards ensures that vocabularies are aligned with PHIN standards and with appropriate industry and Consolidated Health Informatics Initiative (CHI) vocabulary standards. These standards are supported by the PHIN Vocabulary Access and Distribution System (VADS) for accessing, searching, and distributing standards-based vocabularies used within PHIN to local, state and national PHIN partners. It promotes the use of standards-based vocabulary within PHIN systems to support the exchange of consistent information among Public Health Partners.

Projects include:

• Controlled Health Thesaurus;
• Data Message Brokering;
• PHIN VADs (http://www.cdc.gov/phin/activities/applications-services/phinvads/index.html); and,
• PHIN MS (http://www.cdc.gov/phin/activities/applications-services/phinms/index.html).

Vocabulary/Messaging Standards Fact Sheet For more information about Vocabulary/Messaging Standards Click here

Global Public Health Informatics

Overview

The United States spends billions each year globally advancing health improvements, protecting Americans from infectious and other hazards, and furthering health diplomacy. CDC is a primary US government implementer of these programs currently with staff in 61 countries. This mission in today’s globalized and interconnected world where diseases know no borders will require international cooperation, information sharing, utilization of technology, and the science of Public Health Informatics.

Purpose

In recognition, NCPHI established a Global Public Health Informatics Program (GPHIP) in July of 2008 to guide and support CDC’s global goals and meet the informatics needs of its global programs. There are many challenges: lack of coherent, cross-cutting, and comprehensive HQ or country-level PH informatics strategy; lack of use or application of informatics architecture and standards; multiple, poorly coordinated, and redundant information systems and applications silos; lack of interoperability and harmonization; concerns with privacy, confidentiality, and security and data integrity; inadequate informatics implementation support to and capacities in countries; and duplication of efforts and resource wastage. ICT advances provide opportunities to work with the global community to standardize, strengthen, integrate, exchange, share, and interoperate disparate data, tools, and services to impact public health.

Specifically, GPHIP aims to:

• Coordinate NCPHI and CDC global health informatics efforts
• Establish and administer a WHO Collaborating Center for Public Health Informatics
• Provide informatics assistance to CDC-supported countries
• Collaboratively develop and apply informatics innovative solutions to improve domestic and international programs and
• Advance best informatics science, principles, strategies, standards, and practices

Highlights of current GPHIP activities:

• Collaborate with WHO in the development of a Global Public Health Grid to support WHO’s Global Health Observatory and Suite of Tools initiatives
• Support the development of a monitoring tool for the International Health Regulations;
• Collaborate with Health Metrics Network and Open Architectures, Standards, and Information Systems for Healthcare (OASIS) on development of public health information architecture for use at country levels
• Collaborate with WHO to develop global strategies, frameworks, and standards including Data Stewardship Agreement, Interoperability Framework, and Minimum Standards;
• Collaborate with the government of Saudi Arabia on the development and deployment of an electronic integrated disease and healthcare associated infection surveillance systems;
• Collaborate with governments of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and Armenia in the development and deployment of an electronic integrated diseases surveillance system;
• Collaborate with China CDC in the development and deployment of a mobile-based information system for use in health emergencies and surveys and Sichuan integrated information system;
• Establish positions for Chief of Informatics in Saudi Arabia and Kenya and CDC Coordinating Center for Infectious Disease (CCID) liaison officer
• Conduct inventory of CCID information systems worldwide
• Develop CDC strategic plan for global public health informatics, Advisory Board, Technical Working Groups, and roster of experts
• Create and conduct WHO-CDC global public health informatics webinars; support to Conference on Global Health Applications of Mobile Computing Devices; and spearhead an international track at the annual PHIN conference

Global Public Health Informatics Fact Sheet For more information about Global Public Health Informatics Click here