Under Surveillance: Tracking Swine Flu in the U.S.
Client: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Challenge: Build a new module into the NEDSS Base System (NBS) to track the H1N1 virus.
Solution: The H1N1 module gives public health practitioners the ability to enter case reports for flu and provide data to the CDC in a standardized format.
Results: NBS currently covers 16 states and approximately 25 percent of the U.S. population, with over 900 users throughout the country.
Download the full case study (PDF).
Read about the development of the NEDSS Base System.
Learn about our work with the CDC.
A new influenza module is the latest addition to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) Base System, an Internet-based infrastructure developed by CSC, for data accumulation and sharing at the local, state and federal levels.
The system provides a standards-based, integrated approach to disease surveillance for the CDC’s Public Health Information Network.
Electronic tracking of disease
With the new module, public health practitioners can quickly enter case reports for flu, and the data is transmitted to the CDC in a standardized format.
“Prior to the NEDSS Base System, states had to enter influenza data into a centrally located application at the CDC,” says Sumesh Sundareswaran, senior program manager at CSC. “But because it was hosted at the CDC, it was difficult for states to get the data back to assist local reporting."
Data sharing across states
Since 2002, NBS has been offered to state health departments and other organizations for free. NBS is one of three types of systems available to states in meeting their NEDSS requirements. The other two options open to states are the purchase of a commercial off-the-shelf product or a state-developed, built-from-scratch system.
The CDC and CSC jointly developed the public health conceptual model, data standards, and software and systems infrastructure for NBS. The system enables data entry via the Web and allows the intake of electronic laboratory data. These features place data entry capability closer to the data source (local health departments, health care providers, hospitals, etc.), which reduces errors and speeds reporting.
Responding to an outbreak
Even before the specific H1N1 module was completed, the NBS proved flexible enough to gather data on the spring 2009 outbreak that had originated in Mexico. At the center of that rapidly developing public health emergency was Texas, an NBS state. As the epidemic unfolded, Texas was able to configure the NBS to not only respond quickly but to share the framework for response with other NBS states.
The NBS currently covers 16 states and approximately 25 percent of the U.S. population, with over 900 users throughout the country. More than 600,000 Nationally Notifiable Disease electronic messages have been generated by NBS sites.