Improving disease surveillance capabilities in the health information exchanges

Abstract

Public health programs faithfully collect large amounts of data and create a standard set of monitoring level reports that may be rarely accessed outside their programs. Pervasively challenged by incomplete and untimely data transfers, many programs lack the capacity and funding to drastically redefine their way of operation. New efforts to build interoperable healthcare systems are providing an opportunity to break data out of proprietary silos and evolve new bi-directional information flows that drastically improves surveillance and creates timely pro-active communication between vested communities. Leveraging new open source tools, we succeeded in demonstrating several promising benefits for food borne disease surveillance when electronic standards-based data exchange is achieved within an IHE Health Information Exchange. Bringing together efforts to standardize on terminology, data exchange structuring, security, and confidentiality, we can build a better and lower cost foundation that enables redefining the work achieved within public health programs. © 2009 IADIS.