Multi-State Collaboration to Prepare for IIS Modifications, Including H1N1

Background: HP Enterprise Services currently supports the WIR based system in 13 states and territories.  While each state or territory has unique needs and approaches to how they implement their IIS, common elements have emerged.  Changing public health demand, such as H1N1, highlight the need for a structured and consistent model for sharing processes and functionality among these states to make use of limited state resources for IIS system support. 

Setting: A private for profit entity, supporting and maintaining an open source web-based IIS.  A State Health Department implementing the open source web-based IIS.

Population: IIS state and territory project managers, technical leads, subject matter experts, or general staff utilizing the WIR based source code in their IIS implementation.

Project Description: HP has worked in partnership with the WIR based consortium to develop, support and facilitate sharing of information across a variety of topics and platforms.  As a result of ongoing communication facilitated by project level resources and routine calls, initiatives have evolved to help support ongoing IIS implementation both in terms of short term initiatives, such as H1N1, as well as ongoing support activities.   Most notably would be Immunization Evaluator Workgroup and most recently the evolution of the H1N1 CRA Module.

Results/Lessons Learned: Even if projects have individual implementation goals and requirements, there are core areas of functionality that can be addressed as a group or in an evolutionary process, that brings value to the community, not just to the individual project. The creation of the immunization evaluator workgroup allows peer professionals among states and territories an opportunity to vet the ACIP recommendations within the structure of an IIS to best determine how a system can represent a recommendation.  Or in the instance of the H1N1 response needs, states and territories could work together to develop and evolve the needs for the CRA reporting building off each other in a collaborative fashion.