National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS ...

NEDSS Phase II, Deliverables 1 and 2
I. Executive Summary
NEDSS Background
The National Electronic Disease Surveillance System project is an initiative supported by CDC
through a cooperative partnership with many public health stakeholders to improve the
efficiency, effectiveness and timeliness of public health related surveillance information and
associated activities. The stakeholders include the CDC, state public health departments, health
care service organizations, health care product vendors and health care standards organizations.
Specifically, the NEDSS initiative aims to develop standards that will facilitate the collection,
storage, and dissemination of disease related data in real-time, from a variety of sources, to assist
in the monitoring of community health, analysis and detection of emerging public health
problems, and as a basis for public health policy. Some of the distinct opportunities to be gained
through this initiative are:
• Integration of disparate disease reporting systems;
• Ability to identify national public health threats more promptly; and
• More timely and accurate disease reporting.
The standards developed will focus on at least five important areas: data architecture, user
interface, information systems software architecture, tools for analysis, interpretation and
dissemination of data, and secure data transfer. The development of these standards, while
allowing the various State and local health departments enough flexibility to implement systems
that best fit their specific information systems environment and needs, will assure that data (and
software) can be easily and securely shared across health programs.
Purpose
The purpose of this document is to provide BOH professionals with a comprehensive project
plan with which to implement NEDSS within the existing information technology infrastructure.
Utilizing the assessment information gathered in Phase I, this document outlines the necessary
phases and tasks to fully implement the NEDSS Base system and its functionality, while
maintaining the integrity of the NEDSS architecture and existing system data. This includes, but
may not be limited to: data exchange with the State reference laboratory (HETL) along with
other key laboratory stakeholders, functional replacement of both NETSS and TIMS, and some
form of integration with IMMPACT.
Constraints
This document provides high level detailed implementation phase and task descriptions, without
the availability of the final NEDSS Base System from the CDC (to be released Fall of 2001).
Thus, it is not possible to provide complete detail as to all the data management, functionality
and related tasks. This consequently impacts the completeness of the project plan and should be
taken into account when the final Base System does become available to the BOH.
PHRG Page 4 of 35 September 28, 2001