Empowering Environmental Public Health Collaboration with the Exchange Network – Discussion and Demonstration

The Environmental Information Exchange Network (Exchange Network) is an Internet-based system used to securely exchange environmental and health data among EPA, states, tribes, territories, and other partners resulting in improved data quality and the standards based integration of public health information systems, programs and databases. Security services support computer-to-computer connections and scheduled exchanges. The Exchange Network is deployed in all 50 States and by tribal authorities.

 

The technology demonstration will present Version 2.0 of the Exchange Network Node which powers the next generation of the Exchange Network.  The Network Nodes form a flexible, extensible web service network (SOA) that allows partners to easily discover and exchange arbitrary information from any point to any point reliably and the securely.  Protection is provided by a set of centralized security services. New features and tools implemented using this framework will be presented including:

 

• Information publishing services that support the secure exchange and syndication of any data
• Deploying new services with some simple configuration 
• Configuring new RSS/ATOM feeds in minutes
• Using the Exchange Network Discovery Services
• EPA’s Recovery.Gov interface
• Flexible extensible workflow integration
• Support for web service and  browser-based submissions
• Support for embedded and linked syndication

 

Use Case Demonstration

 States have the primary responsibility for implementing the drinking water standards promulgated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). The interest by State Environment and Public Health Agencies in exchanging information for use in public health systems such as the Environmental Public Health Network has led to the development of targeted schema and demonstration efforts to improve interoperability between Exchange Network and PHIN based systems.  The demonstration will examine the progress and challenges for realizing low cost, non-redundant exchanges between similar but not identical standards based network architectures.