Health Information Exchange and Notifiable Disease Surveillance

The 2008 National Health Information Technology (HIT) agenda included the processing of the American Health Information Community (AHIC) detailed use case for public health case reporting developed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).  AHIC recommended development of standards to support automated case reporting from electronic health records or other information systems.  The Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) is modifying the Nationally Notifiable Conditions definitions to be consistent with AHIC recommendations and meet International Health Regulations requirements.  A  Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) Public Health Case Reporting Interoperability Specification, which supports information exchanges of the Public Health Case Reporting process, has been released for implementation while standard development organization efforts are being finalized.  A standard for Public Health Case Reports in a Clinical Document Architecture (CDA), developed by the National Center for Public Health Informatics (NCPHI), was released in 2009. Given these efforts, sites associated with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Accelerating Public Health Situational Awareness Through Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) Projects will assess the utility of HIEs to support notifiable disease case reporting.  

In collaboration with the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS), and New York, Washington, Indiana, and Idaho state, New York City, and Marion County, IN public health agencies, HIE Projects will assess utility of surveillance and reporting of acute hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.  Efforts will build upon established exchange of the AHIC minimum biosurveillance data set (MDS) between HIEs and their respective public health agencies. Activities planned include evaluating the MDS in the context of notifiable disease case reporting, identifying and assessing the availability of additional data elements necessary to conduct acute HBV surveillance, comparing results with existing surveillance mechanisms, and assessing the impact in public health jurisdictions with and without existing electronic laboratory reporting mechanisms.