The National Vital Statistics System serves to provide essential data on births, deaths, and fetal deaths within the United States. Currently, the capturing of data for these events at the facility or provider level for entry into state electronic systems is occurring through manual processes and stand-alone systems. The development of vital records standards will enable interoperable electronic data exchanges among electronic health record systems, U.S. vital records systems and potentially other public information systems.

The National Vital Statistics System has a long and enduring history that serves to provide essential data on births, deaths, and fetal deaths within the United States (U.S.).  A significant number of data items on birth and death certificates are captured in Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Currently, the capturing of these items at the facility or provider level for entry into state electronic systems are occurring through manual processes and stand-alone systems that foster duplicative data entry and a lack of standards. This process can be labor-intensive and lead to errors, adversely affecting the quality of the health and medical information captured on birth and death certificates and increasing hospital labor costs.

CDC/NCHS have collaborated with the National Association of Public Health Statistics and Information Systems and other vital records stakeholders to develop several projects at Health Level Seven International (HL7) and Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) that can serve as the foundation for standardizing electronic data transport/exchange of vital record events. CDC/NCHS also initiated the development of the HL7 Public Health Functional Profile project with the contractual support of the Public Health Data Standards Consortium, to identify functional requirements and conformance criteria for public health clinical information collection, management and exchanges as they apply to various public health programs. 

The panel will outline the vital records needs and priorities for Health Information Technology (HIT) and describe Vital Records in the HL7 PH Functional Profile that identifies the functional requirements needed in an EHR to support data transport/exchange and interoperability between EHR systems and vital records systems. It will also describe the IHE US extension of the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) profile to specify a technical framework for developing interoperable systems that will support electronic capture of EHR system data and transmission of this data to vital records systems.