Laboratory Result Messaging into the NBS

The mission of the Texas NEDSS Project is to provide a standards-based disease surveillance infrastructure that will promote the storage and electronic exchange of information, integrate surveillance and health information systems, provide methods for analyzing trends and detecting public health problems, and supply information for setting public health policy.

 Texas chose the CDC-provided NEDSS Base System (NBS) as their NEDSS foundation.  The NBS was built on de-facto industry standards, using a fairly modular approach for overall system design.  This allows the sharing of common data and processes while allowing for individual components to be developed, maintained, and upgraded in an overarching framework.

 The current implementation of electronic laboratory reporting (ELR) within the Texas Department of State Health Services is an extension of this standards-based foundation.  The Texas ELR process relies on a third-party tool to map incoming data according to industry standards and national ELR implementation guides.  Following this standard message processing sequence, the ELR process then routes the data to the appropriate disease surveillance system.

 Development of the Texas ELR solution is benefiting from a collaborative community of practice.  This community consists of other NBS States as well as other States using NEDSS-compliant data systems for ELR.