Multijurisdictional Approach to Biosurveillance, Kansas City

Abstract

An electronic reporting system for a network of 22 laboratories was implemented in Kansas City, Missouri, with an independent organization acting as a data clearinghouse between the reporting laboratories and public health departments. The system ran in tandem with conventional reporting methods. Laboratory test orders and results were aggregated and mapped to a common nomenclature. Reports were delivered through a secure Internet connection to the Kansas City Health Department (KCHD); during the first 200 days of operation, 359 qualified results were delivered electronically to KCHD. Data were received more quickly than they were with conventional reporting methods: notification of chlamydia cases arrived 2 days earlier, invasive group A streptococcal disease cases arrived 2.3 days sooner, and salmonellosis cases arrived 2.7 days sooner. Data were more complete for all demographic fields, including address, age, sex, race, and date of birth. Two hundred fourteen cases reported electronically were not received by conventional means.

Varieties of interoperability in the transformation of the health-care information infrastructure

“…In Missouri, the Cerner Corporation and the Kansas City Health Department (KCHD) recently collaborated on an electronic reporting system for biosurveillance that takes advantage of a one-to-many messaging architecture and a data-warehousing architecture. 61 A network of 22 laboratories extracted and published new laboratory test orders, results, and patient demographic data on a daily basis to a central data clearinghouse. There the data was loaded into a warehouse, cleansed, and normalized to a common nomenclature.…”

Case Detection, Outbreak Detection, and Outbreak Characterization

“…Khan et al (1993Khan et al ( , 1995 demonstrated methods for automatic case finding for hospital infection control, and Jain et al (1996) developed a tuberculosis case detector. Many organizations are creating electronic laboratory reporting systems, which automate case detection by laboratories (Effler et al, 1999;Overhage et al, 2001;Panackal et al, 2001;Hoffman et al, 2003).…”

Bioterrorism Preparedness: Historical Perspective and an Overview

“…A definitive tool for biosurveillance is the electronic reporting of diagnostic results confirming the presence of a pathogen. Hoffman et al [53] reported a multijurisdictional approach to biosurveillance using an electronic reporting system that ran in tandem with conventional reporting methods. More reports and more complete reports were received electronically compared with conventional methods.…”