Surveillance Strategy Report — How Sharing Advances Surveillance,

How sharing advances surveillance, technology trims tasks and time

Technology Trims Tasks and Time

CDC is revolutionizing the way public health gets, transfers, and uses data. Currently, busy state health departments that track and report illness, injuries,  and outbreaks must submit information to more than 100 different CDC surveillance systems and programs. The Surveillance Data Platform will enable health departments to send data to one place. A shared information technology service, working behind the scenes, will automatically examine data and securely send it to the correct CDC programs.

Surveillance Data Platform

Public health surveillance relies on information collected by more than 3,000 federal, state, and local agency partners. Data are submitted from states to CDC programs in many ways through numerous systems, increasing the workload of state and local public health staff. CDC is developing shared surveillance tools that can be plugged into multiple surveillance systems to improve efficiency.

“We want to advance public health’s critical data infrastructure and pipeline. We are moving from dirt roads to a superhighway to exchange data between partners and CDC.”
Teresa Kinley, MSCS
Lead, Surveillance Data Platform, CDC

Why It Matters
blue silhouette of two figures with two thinking clouds and a check mark

People
Improving efficiency at CDC benefits federal, state, and local public health experts

People 4

Process
Streamlining data submission and routing eliminates redundant tasks and reduces workload

Tablet and Hand

Technology
Building shared disease surveillance services ensures rapid deployment and on-demand scalability

Putting Data to Work: A New Solution on the Horizon

CDC is implementing cutting-edge technology and applying industry standards to critical public health challenges—from infectious diseases to chronic health conditions. The Surveillance Data Platform benefits the people, processes, and technology that inform and support our nation’s public health system. The new platform is being released in stages beginning in 2017.

The streamlined shared services being developed as part of CDC’s strategy to improve surveillance data will transform data collection, sharing, and use

cloud

Newer

A secure, cloud-based platform will centralize and share common information technology services
clock

Faster

Officials respond collaboratively to a health threat as data flows more rapidly between local, state, and federal disease detectives
light bulb

Smarter

Health experts more quickly spot changes in data as a result of systems that improve efficiency and save time
target

Better

Repetitive requests to health departments are reduced through better coordination across multiple disease surveillance systems

Moving the Dial: Reduced Redundancy, Improved Efficiency

2014

CDC launches
Surveillance
Strategy

 

 

 

 

2016

January: CDC leaders agree to develop shared surveillance services to increase efficiency

May: 16 design principles and 28 service priorities selected

September: Design sessions conducted with external stakeholders

 

2017

June: Cloud security set
up for new container
technology

July: First shared service—
vocabulary—is
launched

August: Second shared
service—content-based
routing—is launched

2018

Surveillance
Data Platform
continues
onboarding

 

 

 

Katie Fullerton, MPH

Surveillance provides opportunities to standardize, harmonize, and streamline data to inform public health responses.

Keywords: notifiable disease, outbreak