State electronic disease surveillance systems --- United States, 2007 and 2010

Abstract

The National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) is a web-based infrastructure for public health surveillance data exchange between CDC and the 50 states. In 2007, the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) conducted an assessment to evaluate states' electronic disease surveillance capacity. In 2010, CSTE conducted a follow-up assessment to evaluate the operational status and progress of integration, interoperability, and capacity of state electronic disease surveillance systems. This report summarizes the results of that assessment, which indicated a 17.5% increase from 40 states in 2007 to 47 states in 2010 with fully operational general communicable disease (GCD) electronic surveillance systems, a 211.5% increase from 13 to 39 states in the number of systems that were interoperable, a 22.4% increase from 23 to 34 states in the number with integrated systems, and a 20.0% increase to 42 states with the capacity to receive electronic laboratory reports (ELRs). New Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rules for meaningful use of health information technology encourage data exchange between electronic health record systems and public health agencies, including submission of ELRs. To meet national goals for health information exchange to improve population health, variation in disease surveillance systems should decrease, and functionality should increase.