Disease Surveillance Information Sharing

The diversity of public health surveillance systems employed by various health jurisdictions can become an impediment to sharing public health information about evolving conditions. Because even nearby local health jurisdictions may utilize different disease surveillance systems, their ability to share timely information may not be effective or efficient because the systems lack interoperable communication tools or present information through unfamiliar user interfaces and presentation formats.

This presentation will discuss the utilization of grid technology to implement an information sharing system that enables interoperability between different health surveillance systems.  The proposed information sharing implementation provides a service that operates in a secure framework that is independent of the local surveillance system interface and transparent to the community of users on the grid. The information sharing tool will also implement a user interface for those officials not participating on the grid.  The JHUAPL Center of Excellence is developing a prototype information sharing system that will operate on a Public Health Grid.  This system will utilize a Public Health Grid to enable communication between different jurisdictions using diverse health surveillance systems.  JHUAPL will also conduct a simulated exercise to evaluate the benefits of the information sharing prototype.  Results and lessons learned from the exercise will be discussed.  A demonstration of the Information Sharing system will also be presented.