Outbreak Management Program

Background

During an outbreak or public health event, public health authorities gather information to identify, investigate, analyze, monitor and respond.   Different investigators use different tools and methods making the ability to aggregate and analyze data from a multi-jurisdictional investigation difficult at best, and in some cases, not possible.

OMS v1.2 was completed in December 2006 providing standard demographic and investigation data, exposures and relationships between entities, laboratory data, countermeasures, and customized questionnaires.  An evaluation was completed by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) and PricewaterhouseCoopers, documenting the needs for an outbreak management solution at the state and local level. The OMS application continued to evolve with input primarily from state and local stakeholders. During FY07, the application was used in the Director's Emergency Operation Center (DEOC) during CDC's Pandemic Influenza. After experiencing a cut in funding during FY07, funding was restored for three distinct projects in FY08:   

1.      Enterprise architecture (EA) evaluation

2.      Further OMS tool development

3.      Transition planning (Open Source)

Methods/Strategic Goals

The Outbreak Management System (OMS) is supported by the Outbreak Management Community of Practice (OMCoP). This CoP consist of Outbreak management stakeholders that are interested in providing guidance in the future of OM (Blueprint and Transition) and participate in developing tools to support OMS. Bound to the Method of Business Transformation (MBT), the enterprise architecture (EA) will produce plans as defined by the OMCoP that works in harmony with the other NCPHI Public Health projects.

Conclusions:

To reach our goals, strategic areas of focus have been established. Future plans for OMS include an Enterprise Architecture assessment of OMS that will guide future development. Future development will incorporate functionality for exchanging data with other PHIN-based software solutions such as the NEDSS Base System, Countermeasure and Response Administration, LRN Results Messenger, and BioSense and other OM systems.