Meeting the Goals of the CDC Surveillance Strategy: Improving State Health Information Systems Capacity through Technical Assistance

BACKGROUND: The evolution of technology and data and exchange standards provides CDC with an opportunity to strengthen and modernize the technology infrastructure supporting public health surveillance. The CDC Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity Cooperative Agreement, Health Information Systems capacity (ELC HIS) section provides support for integrated surveillance systems and electronic data exchange, including ELR and sending case notification messages.  As part of the larger CDC Surveillance Strategy, ELC HIS activities are included in two cross-cutting agency initiatives that are now underway: 1) acceleration of electronic laboratory reporting (ELR) to public health agencies, which will help reporting become more timely and complete than ever before, and 2) the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) Modernization Initiative (NMI), which is designed to enhance the surveillance capabilities of NNDSS to provide more comprehensive, timely, and high-quality data than ever before for public health decision making. ELC HIS is providing technical assistance to public health jurisdictions to help achieve the initiatives’ specific objectives and to address the overall CDC Surveillance Strategy goal to improve public health surveillance for reportable diseases and conditions.

METHODS: ELC HIS provides technical assistance to support electronic data exchange, focusing on ELR and case notification messages.  Technical assistance is being provided through a cooperative agreement with the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) for ELR and through CSTE, who has partnered with APHL, for case notifications.  Current efforts are focused on sending nationally notifiable disease messages to CDC in the new HL7 case notification message structure.  CDC will make this technical assistance available following the completion of the NMI pilot. 

RESULTS: This panel session will provide information about the technical assistance CDC is providing for these two initiatives, including

• types of technical assistance available to jurisdictions for ELR and NMI;
• overview of the process to request technical assistance;
• overview of the process used to provide technical assistance, including available tools and resources; and
• success stories, best practices, and lessons learned from jurisdictions who have received technical assistance for ELR and NMI.   

CONCLUSIONS: Providing technical assistance to jurisdictions will help them accelerate ELR and implement the new NMI HL7 case notifications. By providing jurisdictions with a greater understanding of technical assistance, this session will help them gain access to skilled personnel, resources, tools, and solutions to assist them in efficiently implementing ELR and NMI.