Achieving the Goal of NMI through Technical Assistance: Improving Public Health Jurisdiction Capacity to Send HL7 Case Notifications

BACKGROUND: CDC is using the rapid and continued evolution of information technology and data exchange standards as an opportunity to strengthen and modernize the technological infrastructure supporting public health surveillance. The National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) Modernization Initiative (NMI) is a cross-cutting agency initiative designed to enhance the nation’s public health surveillance system’s capabilities to provide more comprehensive, timely, and higher quality data than ever before for public health decision-making. Through NMI, public health jurisdictions will use the HL7 data exchange standard to submit NNDSS case notifications to CDC. CDC is supporting this work through the CDC cooperative agreement for Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity, Health Information Systems section, which provides technical assistance to support accelerating electronic laboratory reporting and implementation of standardized HL7 case notification messages. In addition, CDC is providing technical assistance to support sending HL7 case notification messages to CDC through cooperative agreements with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) and Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL).

METHODS: Over the past year, CDC has been working with CSTE and APHL to provide technical assistance to volunteer public health jurisdictions to pilot the implementation of HL7 messages by using CDC-developed message mapping guides (MMGs). Throughout the message implementation process, the pilot jurisdictions have been providing key feedback that helps to guide the development of sustainable tools and resources, identify potential issues with the MMGs, and evaluate the NMI technical assistance process.

RESULTS: This presentation will provide a broad overview of the process for requesting NMI technical assistance; the various processes used to provide technical assistance; and the tools and resources available to implement HL7 case notification messages. In addition, success stories, best practices, and lessons learned from pilot jurisdictions will be shared.  

CONCLUSIONS: Providing public health jurisdictions with technical assistance, including access to skilled personnel, resources, tools, and solutions, helps to increase their workforce capacity and technical knowledge to efficiently implement HL7 NNDSS case notification messages.