All Hazards

NC DETECT provides near-real-time statewide surveillance capacity to local, regional and state level users across NC with twice daily data feeds from 117 (99%) emergency departments (EDs), hourly updates from the statewide poison center, and daily feeds from statewide EMS runs and select urgent care centers. The NC DETECT Web Application provides access to aggregate and line listing analyses customized to users' respective jurisdictions. The most active users are state-level epidemiologists (DPH) and hospital-based public health epidemiologists (PHEs). The use of NC DETECT is included in PHE job descriptions and NC DETECT functionality has been developed specifically to meet the surveillance needs of this group, including data entry of aggregated lab results for flu and respiratory panels. Interviews of local health department (LHD) users completed as part of an evaluation project have suggested that functionality specifically tailored to LHDs may increase their use of the NC DETECT Web application [1]. As of June 2011, there were 139 LHD users with active accounts to use the Web application (out of 384 total users with active accounts).

Objective

To describe the development, implementation and preliminary evaluation of new dashboard interfaces in NC DETECT, designed primarily for infrequent users of NC DETECT at local health departments.

Description: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) works to save lives and protect people during major public health events. In an effort to support these processes, CDC established the Countermeasure Tracking Systems (CTS), which is maintained within the Division of Informatics Solutions and Operations, in the Public Health Informatics and Technical Program Office. CTS consists of four system components which interoperate to improve communications and event response efficiency while still functioning independently, recognizing the unique requirements and use cases for each system. Collectively, the data consolidated from these systems can show population coverage, numbers of untreated individuals, drug and equipment shortages, need for resupply and more. The Web-based applications are deployed centrally at CDC and use the CDC's secure data access method for security.

The first of these components is the Inventory Management and Tracking System (IMATS), currently under development. IMATS provides state and local public health providers with a tool to track medical and non-medical countermeasure inventory and supplies during daily operations or an event. The solution tracks quantities of inventory, monitors reorder thresholds, and facilitates warehouse operations including receiving, staging, and storing of inventory.

The Communications Portal is a web based content management system in development which consolidates important event response details into one place and will provide timely and adequate information to states and other jurisdictions. This system is complementary to the IMATS as it manages communications related to, but not limited to, Emergency Use Authorization, Investigational New Drug and recall notices.

Objective

To describe the CDC CTS, and the impact of its four closely related informatics components toward enhancing federal, state, and local public health capacity to track and manage medicine and other medical or non-medical supplies during daily operations and all hazards public health events.