Winter 2015
APHL is partnering with the CDC and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) to help public health agencies migrate from legacy messaging structures to HL7 standards that will provide content standardization and interoperable message exchange structures. The project supports a CDC initiative to update and improve the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS), which delivers data on disease cases ranging from measles and mumps to anthrax and plague. The first step in implementation involves Message Mapping Guides (MMGs) for target conditions.
Project 1: Mapping Hepatitis Data in Michigan
In October, an APHL team traveled to the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) to undertake its first engagement under the project, implementation of the MMG for hepatitis. An association team worked closely with MDCH IT, epidemiologists and leadership, joining calls with CSTE and CDC to update staff on progress and work through issues in real time.
APHL delivered a Rhapsody route with built-in validations to limit the time required for in-house development and a template to consolidate inputs from multiple local sources in a single master document. APHL will continue to develop the route and template, which will be offered to other pilot sites as reusable tools.
Next MDCH will generate test messages, internally validate message structure and content, and conduct end-to-end testing. The agency will work with APHL and CDC to send HL7 messages via the Public Health Information Network Messaging System to the CDC platform for additional validation.
APHL looks forward to working with other pilot sites once CDC has completed the validation of Michigan’s test messages.
For more information contact, Patina Zarcone, MPH Director, Informatics, 240.485.2788, patina.zarcone@aphl.org