National Electronic Disease Surveillance System
NEDSS Overview
NEDSS (National Electronic Disease Surveillance System) is an Internet-based infrastructure for public health
surveillance data exchange that uses specific PHIN (Public Health Information Network) and NEDSS Data Standards.
NEDSS also relies heavily on industry standards (including: standard vocabulary code sets such as LOINC,
SNOMED, and HL7), policy-level agreements on data access, and the protection of confidentiality. NEDSS represents
an ongoing close collaboration between the CDC and its public health partners.
NEDSS is not a single, monolithic application, but a system of interoperable subsystems, components and
systems modules that include software applications developed and implemented by the CDC; those developed and
implemented by State and Local health departments and those created by commercial services and vendors.
Strategic Realignment
During FY 07, CDC’s National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) Project strategically realign its
funding and long range planning to better address changing information technology capabilities and to meet emerging
needs in local, state, and national public health surveillance. These realigned resources will support
standards-based PHIN and American Health Information Community (AHIC)-approved, electronic message exchange
between public health stakeholders.
The strategic realignment of NEDSS funding moves the project from work to design, develop, deploy, and support a new
CDC-built NEDSS Program Area Module (PAM) Platform application to a new business model. Today, in addition to the
commercial products now available, many states have used in-house resources to develop NEDSS-compatible applications.
This changing business environment provides CDC with new opportunities to enhance the NEDSS vision of national
integrated surveillance, while remaining focused on supporting state and local health department surveillance data
systems needs.
