Illinois'-National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (I-NEDSS) – The Geographic Information System (GIS) component of Analysis, Visualization, and Reporting (AVR)

       In 2004, all Illinois’- National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (I-NEDSS) users were given the ability to create Ad-hoc reports and use canned reports through a web based Analysis, Visualization, and Reporting (AVR) solution.  This solution, coupled with disease and jurisdiction level security has allowed all users to conduct real-time queries on all of their data and state-wide aggregations.  Geographic Information System (GIS) capabilities have always been part of the plan for the I-NEDSS AVR but the development of separate security models had prevented implementation.  

       Recent innovations in analytical software have successfully bridged the gap between traditional web-based reporting tools and GIS, allowing IDPH to integrate GIS into AVR.  This seamless analysis interface will be available to all I-NEDSS disease reporters and investigators after our fall 2008 release.   The enhanced AVR provides all users the ability to create a report then visualize the data spatially without downloading to a client based application.   Security roles are maintained through the process so a user can only view the spatial data that they have been given authority (point locations or state-wide rate-based aggregations).  Since the GIS component is heavily integrated with our AVR, separate security systems were not required which reduces future maintenance costs.