Vocabulary development to support Public Health Interoperability is complex. Since the introduction of PHIN VADS in 2004, vocabulary content has been developed and loaded into PHIN VADS via a labor intensive manual process that took weeks to complete. In 2010, CDC deployed a web-based value set authoring tool, which streamlined the process resulting in a 75% reduction in duration and labor to maintain value sets and places the capability in the hands of vocabulary experts.

Introduction

Public health data exchange and interoperability relies on the ability to successfully transmit quality data between organizations.  To effectively transmit data electronically, both receiver and sender systems must understand the meaning of the data exchanged, commonly known as semantic interoperability. 

PHIN VADS (Vocabulary Access and Distribution System) is the Web-based vocabulary system used for accessing, searching, and distributing vocabularies within PHIN and promotes the use of standards-based vocabulary supporting semantic interoperability amongst Public Health Partners.  

PHIN Universal Authoring Framework (UAF) provides collaborative, distributed vocabulary authoring capability through a secure web-application so that program vocabulary experts (informaticists, epidemiologists, lab, etc.) can manage their own value sets within PHIN VADS.

Methods

PHIN UAF is currently available to CDC partners, value set creators and quality measure developers involved in the development and management of value sets present in PHIN VADS.  PHIN UAF enables vocabulary SMEs to reuse and share the existing 800 public health value sets in PHIN VADS.  Application access is controlled by Security Roles ranging from full authoring and management access of a Global Administrator to the limited read only access of a Vocabulary Steward and allows program vocabulary specialists to:

• Either enumerate the value set concepts or provide the logic for creating the intrinsic value set.
• Select a particular version of the value set to be associated with the messaging vocabulary view.
• Create / import code systems which include the concepts, relationships, alternate designations, and extended properties.

Results

PHIN UAF provides quick management of existing public health value sets and is ready to support new value sets related to natural disasters or outbreaks. PHIN UAF streamlined the vocabulary authoring process resulting in a 75% reduction in duration and labor to maintain value sets and places the capability in the hands of vocabulary experts.