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Enabling ESSENCE to Process and Export Meaningful Use Syndromic Surveillance Data

Description

Objective:

The objective of this project is to enable the ESSENCE system to read in, utilize, and export out meaningful use syndromic surveillance data using the Health Level 7 (HL7) v2.5 standard. This presentation will detail the technical hurdles with reading a meaningful use syndromic surveillance data feed containing multiple sources, deriving a common meaning from the varying uses of the standard and writing data out to a meaningful use HL7 2.5 format that can be exported to other tools, such as BioSense 2.0 (2). The presentation will also describe the technologies employed for facilitating this, such as Mirth, and will discuss how other systems could utilize these tools to also support processing meaningful use syndromic surveillance data.

Introduction:

In order to utilize the new meaningful use syndromic surveillance data sets that many public health departments are now receiving, modifications to their systems must be made. Typically this involves enabling the storage and processing of the extra fields the new standard contains. Open source software exists, such as Mirth Connect, to help with reading and interpreting the standard. However, issues with reliably reading data from one source to another arise when the standard itself is misunderstood. Systems that process this data must understand that while the data they receive is in the HL7 v2.5 standard format, the meaning of the data fields might be different from provider to provider. Additional work is necessary to sift thro

Submitted by jababrad@indiana.edu on