Case Notifications to NNDSS Via HL7 and the Generic v2 Message Mapping Guide

The Nationally Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) is a state-based public health surveillance system centered on a list of Nationally Notifiable Infectious Diseases (NNID), that are approved by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. The current message standard for sending case notification data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is an ASCII file format called the NETSS.DAT (National Electronic Telecommunications Surveillance System) message. The future standard will be the PHIN Case Notification Message which supports NEDSS (National Electronic Disease Surveillance System) using the HL7 v2.5 message format. PHIN Message Mapping Guides, which are used in conjunction with the Message Structure Specification for National Condition Reporting document, specify the content and structure of the NEDSS HL7 v2.5 message for case notifications submitted to CDC. The Message Mapping Guides are developed by the CDC programs working in collaboration with their analogous subject matter experts working in state and territorial health departments, they are reviewed by external partners, and subsequently published by CDC on the PHIN website. With the release of the Generic version 2 Message Mapping Guide, some external partners have inquired about how and why these message mapping guides are created. Staff from the NNDSS recognize the need to explain the Generic version 2 message mapping guide, what the NETSS-to-NEDSS transition is, and what this transition means for reporting jurisdictions interested in sending NNID case notifications to CDC. The NETSS-to-NEDSS transition is an endeavor that will require a collaboration between CDC; pubic health specialists in local, state, and territorial health departments and other external partners. NNDSS and NEDSS have expertise in each aspect of this transition that external partners can utilize to adopt the new HL7 v2.5 message format. NNDSS is currently collaborating and assisting states that have started to make this transition using HL7. NEDSS has provided Rhapsody training for states that have adopted this tool to create the HL7 v2.5 message, assisted the states in mapping their state surveillance system variables to the disease-specific PHIN message mapping guide, and has guided the process of sending test and production case notification HL7 v2.5 messages to CDC via the Public Health Information Network – Messaging System (PHIN-MS).