Finding Common Ground in the development of requirements for information systems supporting state and local public health work in preparedness and chronic disease

Current public health information systems are inadequate to meet the increasing complexity and volume of work being done by epidemiologists and others in state and local departments of health. Establishing effective information systems involves collaboratively examining how public health work activities currently take place, looking at ways those activities can be done more effectively and efficiently, and identifying the requirements for an information system that would support the redesigned activities. Although state and local departments of health are different, they share many ways in which they do their work. Common Ground is a project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation involving six jurisdictions in the preparedness area and ten in the chronic disease area. The jurisdictions in each area come together in workgroups to collaboratively identify the activities (business processes) involved in the work they do. These common business processes are defined using a matrix (business processes, business rules, objectives, outputs, outcomes, and indicators), context diagrams (description of information exchange and flow) and task flow diagrams (sequence and decision points for discrete tasks). They will then redesign their task flows to maximize their available resources and make the process more efficient. When the redesign is conducted, they will develop the requirements for an information system that will support the work of their shared goals, tasks and activities. The collaborative approach enables the sharing of innovative ideas and addresses ways in which barriers can best be addressed. It leads to a more consistent view of the work actually done in public health and to information systems that better meet the needs of public health.