The American Immunization Registry Association Collaborates to Develop a Standard MOU for Interstate Exchange of Immunization Histories Between IIS

Background:
On September 24, 2008, The American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) held a regional forum of the Northeast IIS grantees, VT, ME, RI, CT, NYC, NYS, NJ, PA and Philadelphia, focused on Interstate Data Sharing and building on a successful pilot exchange between NYC and NJ. The agenda included the development of a standard MOU addressing privacy and confidentiality, a minimum data set, and parameters for data quality that all jurisdictions could use. Although the primary objective was to enable IIS to IIS exchange, many of the same issues affect IIS exchange with EHRs, within HIEs, and between local and state IIS in NYS and PA.

Setting:


Population:


Project Description:
Objective: Draft and finalize a standard interstate data exchange MOU that can be universally used to share immunization information.
Methods: A small AIRA ad-hoc work group drafted and refined an MOU based on a compilation of interstate IIS agreements between other states outside of the region and on an MOU developed for newborn screening. AIRA harmonized their proposed agreement with the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaborative (HISPC), Inter-Organizational Agreement (IOA) Collaborative, one of whose objectives is to create a standard agreement that can be used across health information exchanges (including bi-directional public-to-public exchanges and public-to-private exchanges).

Results/Lessons Learned:
Adoption of a standard agreement by HITSPC and AIRA, to be used first to exchange IIS information between the Philadelphia KIDS IIS and the NJIIS.
Conclusion: AIRA continues to develop and support the use of standards through its own members and membership in PHDSC to enhance use of immunization information by increasing data exchanges between IIS and providers and between jurisdictions that share providers and population.