Speed, reliability, and uniformity of data collection enable syndromic surveillance (SyS) systems to provide public health authorities (PHAs) with timely information about community health threats and trends. Increasingly, healthcare information technology (HIT) is being used to accelerate and automate data collection for more real-time surveillance, reducing irregularity in how SyS data are packaged and sent by healthcare providers. Continuing to focus on patient and population health outcomes, the on-going US federal program that certifies HIT to promote interoperability has mandated broader use of an updated standard for communication of SyS data. Under the Edition 2015 federal rule tied to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, hospitals, in addition to emergency departments and urgent care centers, are now required to provide SyS data to PHAs using HL7 2.5.1 messages that are in conformance with Release 2.0 of the CDC’s Public Health Information Network (PHIN) guide for SyS. To facilitate the intended application of this updated standard, a new version of conformance testing tools is being published, which will enable HIT developers to increase their probability of meeting the requirements outlined in the standard and lead to enhanced product interoperability and reliability.
Objective
Describe how the 2015 Edition of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Syndromic Surveillance Messaging Validation Suite continues to support federal efforts to increase healthcare information technology interoperability for timelier public health surveillance in the US; and show how this tool is used to validate messages.