Interoperability Between the EHR and Public Health Disease Surveillance – the Cancer Registry Use Case

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Program of Cancer Registries-Advancing E-Cancer Reporting and Registry Operations (NPCR-AERRO) is a collaborative initiative to position the cancer surveillance community to take advantage of the electronic health record (EHR) for cancer surveillance. Central cancer registries (CCR) depend on reporting from multiple healthcare facilities to accurately and reliably monitor the number of cancer cases diagnosed each year in the United States.  Much of the reporting from non-hospital data sources (physician offices, surgery centers, treatment centers, etc.) is still primarily paper-based.  CCR can benefit greatly from the development of an EHR which is based on consistent national standards.  NPCR-AERRO has identified several cancer registry use cases that can be addressed by existing Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) constructs for the exchange of standardized healthcare information from the patient care setting to public health practice.  CDC NPCR has been actively involved in several activities that are focused on moving the cancer surveillance community forward in implementing national standards for electronic data exchange.  CCR represent public health reporting that can be used as a model for other public health programs to develop their respective use cases in the EHR environment.

This presentation will describe the Cancer Registry Use Cases used for testing and demonstration at a future IHE Connectathon and IHE Interoperability Showcase.  We will discuss activities focused on implementing standardized reporting of data from clinical care to CCR.