Disease surveillance systems remain the best quality systems to rely on when standardized surveillance systems provide the best data to understand disease occurrence and trends. The United States National Tuberculosis Surveillance System (NTSS) contains reported tuberculosis (TB) cases provided by all 50 states, the District of Columbia (DC), New York City, Puerto Rico, and other U.S.-affiliated jurisdictions in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. However, the NTSS currently captures phenotypic drug susceptibility testing (DST) data and does not have the ability to collect the rapid molecular DST data generated by platforms such as Cepheid GeneXpert MTB/RIF, Hain MTBDRplus and MTBDRsl, Pyrosequencing, and Whole Genome Sequencing. Moreover, the information exchanges within the NTSS (represented in HL7 v2.5.1) are missing critical segments for appropriately representing laboratory test results and data on microbiological specimens.
Objective:
The objective of this presentation is to use a congruence of standardization protocols to effectively ensure that the quality of the data elements and exchange formats within the NTSS are optimal for users of the system.