Page 13 - Driving Public Health in the Fast Lane

Core Pillars of Public Health Surveillance

National public health surveillance has been built through a strong, long-standing partnership with CDC
and state, territorial, local, and tribal public health departments. There are five core pillars and processes
that serve as the foundation for modernization of the nation’s public health surveillance system. (More
detailed descriptions can be found in Appendix A.)

1. Electronic case reporting (eCR)

• eCR is the automatic submission of disease reports directly from clinical care electronic
health records (EHRs) at clinical care organizations to state, territorial, local, and tribal health
departments.

• eCR implementation is under development and has the potential to transform data exchange
between health care providers and public health departments.

2. Laboratory information management systems (LIMS), including electronic laboratory reporting (ELR)

• LIMS are computer applications that form the backbone of laboratory data collection,
management, storage, and sharing.
• ELR is used to electronically report laboratory results from LIMS (private laboratory or public
health laboratory) to public health epidemiologists.

3. Syndromic surveillance

• Syndromic surveillance uses near real-time data collection
The Public Health from hospital emergency department visits and data sources
Enterprise from other points of care in the community, such as urgent
care centers, poison center calls, or emergency medical
Effective prevention, service runs for continuous monitoring of community health.
detection, response, and
policy development rely on • This system has evolved to include more data sources and
coordinated efforts between advanced detection analytics.
public health agencies at all
levels of government—federal, 4. Electronic vital records systems
state, territorial, local, and
tribal—working together • The electronic vital records system is a national system of 57
with health care providers, state and territorial vital records jurisdictions that provide
the private sector, and the secure electronic collection of birth and death data from
public. This collective effort hospitals, funeral homes, health care providers, and medical
to protect and promote examiners.
the public’s health is the
“public health enterprise.” • Electronic death registration systems (EDRS) provide
As stakeholders work to mortality data.
modernize public health
data systems, improvements 5. National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS)
and investments must be
understood and advanced • NNDSS is the national disease system that collects,
at the “enterprise level.” aggregates, and analyzes individual case investigations of
Modernizing public health reportable diseases and conditions from state, territorial,
data systems at the enterprise
level will benefit all public local, and tribal public health agencies from hospitals, health
health programs at all levels care providers, and laboratories.
of the government for all
diseases and conditions.
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