Interoperability

Oregon Public Health Division (OPHD), in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, implemented Oregon ESSENCE in 2012. Oregon ESSENCE is an automated, electronic syndromic surveillance system that captures emergency department data. To strengthen the capabilities of Oregon ESSENCE, OPHD sought other sources of health-outcome information, including Oregon Poison Center (OPC). In the past, Oregon’s surveillance staff manually monitored OPC data on the National Poison Data Service (NPDS) website. Although functional, it was not integrated into Oregon’s syndromic surveillance system and required epidemiologists to assess alerts on individual calls. To achieve data integration, OPHD pursued an automated solution to deliver OPC data into Oregon ESSENCE. OPHD’s growing interoperability infrastructure fostered development of a low-cost, reliable solution to automate the integration of these data sources. 

Objective

To enhance Oregon ESSENCE’s surveillance capabilities by incorporating data from the Oregon Poison Center using limited resources. 

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) needs to be able to collect, use, and share clinical, individual-level health data electronically in secure and standardized ways in order to optimize surveillance capabilities, support public health goals, and ensure proper follow-up and action to public health threats. MDH programs, public health departments, and health care providers across the state are facing increasing demands to receive and submit electronic health data through approaches that are secure, coordinated, and efficient; use appropriate data standards; meet state and federal privacy laws; and align with best practices. This framework builds upon existing informatics models and two past studies assessing health information exchange (HIE) conducted by the MDH Office of Health Information Technology (OHIT) to provide MDH surveillance systems with an outline of the key elements and considerations for transitioning to more secure, standards-based, electronic data exchange. 

Objective

To create an informatics framework and provide guidance to help Minnesota’s public health surveillance systems achieve interoperability and transition to standards-based electronic information exchange with external health care providers using the state’s birth defects registry as an initial pilot program. 

Link to publication: 

View the abstract here

The purpose of this project is to demonstrate progress in developing a scientific and practical approach for public health (PH) emergency preparedness and response informatics (EPRI) that supports the National Health Security Strategy and Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) objectives. PH emergency operations centers (EOC) contribute to health security objectives because they operationalize response, recovery and mitigation activities during national and international PH events. The primary focus of this presentation is to describe the results of an analysis of CDC’s EOC, and other EOCs, in building their EPRI capabilities.