PHIN Case Notification Using HL7 v2.5 Messaging – Technical Assistance and Guidance

The Nationally Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) is a state-based public health surveillance system centered on a list of Nationally Notifiable Infectious Diseases (NNID), that are approved by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. The current message standard for sending case notification data to the CDC is an ASCII file format called the NETSS.DAT (National Electronic Telecommunications Surveillance System) message. The future standard will be the PHIN Case Notification Message which supports NEDSS (National Electronic Disease Surveillance System) using the HL7 v2.5 message format.

PHIN Message Mapping Guides (MMGs), which are used in conjunction with the Message Structure Specification for National Condition Reporting document, specify the content and structure of the NEDSS HL7 v2.5 message for case notifications submitted to CDC. The MMGs are developed by the CDC programs in collaboration with their analogous SMEs working in state and territorial health departments, reviewed by external partners, and published to the CDC PHIN website. External partners have inquired about how and why these MMGs are created. Staff from the Division of Integrated Surveillance Systems and Services (DISSS) in NCPHI, recognize the need to explain the MMGs, what the NETSS-to-NEDSS transition is, and what this transition means for reporting jurisdictions interested in sending NNID case notifications.

The NETSS-to-NEDSS transition will require collaboration between CDC and public health specialists in all health departments. DISSS staff has expertise in each aspect of this transition that partners can utilize to adopt the new HL7 v2.5 message. DISSS is collaborating and assisting states that started to make this transition using HL7 by providing Rhapsody training for states adopting this tool to create the HL7 v2.5 message; assisting the states in mapping variables to the disease-specific PHIN MMGs; and guiding the process of sending test and production case notification HL7 v2.5 messages to CDC via PHIN-MS.