A Public-Private Partnership to Develop and Deploy Open Source Disease Surveillance and Management System

The Utah Department of Health (UDOH) and Utah's 12 local health departments (LHDs) used paper and separate DOS-based systems for disease surveillance from 1991-2007.  Following the failure of a single, replacement system, which was purchased to meet public health business needs statewide, a collaborative, agile development approach was initiated to develop a new open source, NEDSS-compatible and PHIN-compliant disease surveillance and management software application.  In November 2007, UDOH established a public-private partnership with Collaborative Software Initiative (CSI) and worked jointly with several Utah LHD subject matter experts (SMEs) and the Utah Department of Technology Services to develop the web-based disease surveillance, form builder and management system.  Utah successfully deployed the new system in 2009 after less than 14 months of development.  The system, CSI TriSano^TM, serves UDOH and all of Utah's 12 LHDs with a central database and web-based application.  Using a combination of core and configurable data, end users have created 63 disease-specific data collection forms used in Utah, including the development and deployment (in less than 24 hours) of a new form that was consistent with CDC's "Swine Influenza Case Report Form" that was initially distributed nationwide in a PDF format in April 2009.  Additionally, case, contact, and task management tools and routing functionality have supported LHD needs statewide.  SMEs have contributed an estimated 1,600 hours toward planning efforts and prioritization.  The development of the system required intense cross-jurisdictional and cross-sector involvement and disciplined attention to prioritization, but also allowed rapid development of a high-value, low-cost system that met minimum requirements for production deployment.  SME ownership of the project roadmap and development priorities, along with the frequent iterations to demonstrate new features, enabled continual course corrections that increased the probability of success.  CSI TriSano^TM's ultimate success will require participation of other jurisdictions in the open source, public-private collaboration.