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BACKGROUND: Florida's reportable disease surveillance system, Merlin, stores disease case data for epidemiological investigations and disease control, including data for vaccine-preventable diseases. The immunization information system (IIS) for Florida, State Health Online Tracking System (SHOTS), receives immunization data from health care providers across the state and applies algorithms to evaluate and make recommendations for vaccination timing. These two systems have traditionally been standalone. Because these systems are not interoperable, time-consuming duplicate work occurs.
METHODS: Meetings between the Merlin and SHOTS project teams were held to develop the project timeline and a phased implementation schedule. Feedback from system users was obtained to develop defined project requirements to benefit both systems. In Phase 1, Merlin users will be able to query SHOTS via an HL7 2.5.1 web service call directly from within the Merlin surveillance application (mimicking a physician electronic health record web service call), and SHOTS demographic, contact, and vaccination history information is returned and displayed in Merlin for case investigators to use as a reference when answering disease case investigation questions. In Phase 2, SHOTS immunization history information will be used to automatically derive and populate answers to the disease case investigation questions within Merlin. In Phase 3, demographic, contact, and immunization information from Merlin will be sent to SHOTS without user initiation in order to further populate the registry.
RESULTS: In Phase 1, which is scheduled for statewide release early January 2015, Merlin successfully displays SHOTS production data. Estimated user time savings and data quality and completeness improvement as a result of the project implementation will be discussed during the session.
CONCLUSIONS: Building interoperability between a reportable disease surveillance system and an IIS benefits users of both systems, saves time by reducing duplicate data entry, and improves data accuracy through the use of algorithms to answer questions rather than depending on user calculation. Additionally, the IIS is updated through an additional data source (reportable disease surveillance system), providing more complete contact, demographic, and immunization history information.