The Florida Department of Health and the Texas Department of State Health Services Influenza Electronic Data Exchange Interoperability Partnership Project

Two of the most highly populated U. S. States, Florida and Texas, face similar natural disasters ranging from hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and tornadoes to infectious disease outbreaks.  Both states have large commercial livestock, poultry, and fishing industries and have expansive international border crossings.  All of these factors underscore the importance of a responsive influenza surveillance system and the need for a Public Health Laboratory Information System (LIMS) that is fully operational under emergency conditions. 

 Texas and Florida have formed a partnership for surge capacity utilizing electronic data exchange.  This collaborative effort has fostered the ability to identify and implement efficiencies at a much more rapid pace than either state could hope to do independently.  The focus thus far has been on interstate interoperability for real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis of seasonal and potentially pandemic influenza strains. 

 FDOH’s Data Integration team has the wherewithal and the willingness to provide a transfer of knowledge to the TDSHS team in designing and configuring a data integration architecture able to support a bi-directional send/receive exchange of electronic orders and results, between two states or between a state and CDC, via the regional PHINMS Route-not-Read (RnR) hub. 

Newly drafted national guidelines and standards, such as those developed by the Public Health Interoperability Project (PHLIP), can be more readily put into place utilizing a collaborative partnership paradigm.  The PHLIP concept of Mentor states has made it possible to leverage the time and effort invested by one state in vocabulary harmonization and standardization into a speedier implementation in another.  The availability of bi-directional laboratory ordering and resulting under surge conditions creates the necessary redundancy to ensure timely surveillance when it is most needed.