How Sharing Advances Surveillance

How Sharing Advances Surveillance

Technology Trims Tasks and Time

Surveillance Data Platform

Public health surveillance relies on information collected by more than 3,000 federal, state, and local agency partners. Data are submitted from states to CDC programs in many ways through numerous systems, increasing the workload of state and local public health staff. CDC is developing shared surveillance tools that can be plugged into multiple surveillance systems to improve efficiency.

Why It Matters

CDC is revolutionizing the way public health gets, transfers, and uses data. Currently, busy state health departments that track and report illness, injuries, and outbreaks must submit information to more than 100 different CDC surveillance systems and programs. The Surveillance Data Platform will enable health departments to send data to one place. A shared information technology service, working behind the scenes, will automatically examine data and securely send it to the correct CDC programs.

• People
  Improving efficiency at CDC benefits federal, state, and local public health experts
• Process
  Streamlining data submission and routing eliminates redundant tasks and reduces workload
• Technology
  Building shared disease surveillance services ensures rapid deployment and on-demand scalability

 

“We want to advance public health’s critical data infrastructure and pipeline. We are moving from dirt roads to a superhighway to bring data to CDC.”
— Teresa Kinley, MSCS Lead of CDC’s Surveillance Data Platform

Putting Data to Work: A New Solution on the Horizon

CDC is implementing cutting-edge technology and applying industry standards to critical public health challenges—from infectious diseases to chronic health conditions. The Surveillance Data Platform benefits the people, processes, and technology that inform and support our nation’s public health system. The new platform is being released in stages beginning in 2017.

The streamlined shared services being developed as part of CDC’s Surveillance Strategy will transform public health surveillance data collection, sharing, and use.

• Newer
  A secure, cloud-based platform will centralize and share common information technology services
• Faster
  Officials respond collaboratively to a health threat as data flows more rapidly between local, state, and federal disease detectives
• Smarter
  Health experts more quickly spot changes in data as a result of systems that improve efficiency and save time
• Better
  Repetitive requests to health departments are reduced through better coordination across multiple disease surveillance systems

 

Moving the Dial: Reduced Redundancy, Improved Efficiency

2014    CDC launches Surveillance Strategy

2016

Jan—CDC leaders agree to develop shared surveillance services to increase efficiency

May—16 design principles and 28 service priorities selected

Sept–Design sessions conducted with external stakeholders

2017

June—Cloud security set up for new container technology

July—First shared service—vocabulary—is launched

Aug— Second shared service—content-based routing—is launched

2020    Surveillance Data Platform is fully functional (planned)

www.cdc.gov/surveillance

September 2017