BACKGROUND: The reportable conditions system is a cornerstone of public health surveillance. Accurate, timely and complete reporting of reportable conditions depends on reporters having correct and current information about reporting specifications, the “who, what, when, where, and how” of reporting. Currently, there is no single place where reporting specifications can be accessed by healthcare reporters. Reporting criteria differ across state and local jurisdictions, and the information is often difficult for users to locate and navigate. The Reportable Conditions Knowledge Management System (RCKMS) was developed to provide a centralized, authoritative portal for U.S. jurisdictions to author and validate their reporting specifications and for reporters to access those requirements. The system also provides access to a centralized public health decision support service that returns a Reportability Response to identify whether a case is reportable and to which jurisdiction. RCKMS aligns with national initiatives supporting interoperability and implementation of electronic case reporting (eCR).
METHODS: HLN Consulting, LLC, under a collaborative project with CDC and CSTE, has developed RCKMS to support accurate, timely and complete reporting of reportable conditions. RCKMS has been developed to support standards, including Health Level Seven (HL7), Object Management Group (OMG), and relevant semantic (terminology) standards. With stakeholder and jurisdiction input, an overall architecture and system has been designed to support reporting requirements and the larger eCR workflow. In 2016, the RCKMS Team worked with a Jurisdiction Focus Group to solicit feedback to improve the usability of the tool.
RESULTS: This presentation will describe the technical architecture of RCKMS, the authoring interface, and the decision support service, which allows EHR systems to submit initial electronic case reports and evaluates for reportability to jurisdictions. HLN will describe the main features of the authoring tool where jurisdictions specify their reporting specifications and test the validity of their rules. In addition, HLN will describe the workflow of how the decision support service determines reportability and provides a Reportability Response. Lastly, HLN will unveil the new, modernized interface of the RCKMS Tool that showcases a user-friendly authoring interface, highlighting changes that were implemented as a result of feedback from the 2016 Jurisdiction Focus Group.
CONCLUSIONS: Development of the RCKMS Tool has matured to support electronic case reporting. With active feedback from the eCR community and jurisdictions, RCKMS will continue to align with current standards and national initiatives to support interoperability and the implementation of electronic case reporting.