Abstract
Public health laboratories at all capacity levels are facing challenges in exchanging electronic data among themselves and with their partners. In response to this the Association of Public Health Laboratories working collaboratively with CDC launched an innovative portal development project in January 2006. This portal will enable public health laboratories to collaborate in a web-based environment to establish a standardized vocabulary for test identifications and test results, a cornerstone for creating interoperable information systems.
This poster will present the Association of Public Health Laboratories and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Laboratory Interoperability Project (PHLIP) Portal. The purpose of this web-based portal is to establish a collaborative environment to support the APHL community’s progress towards interoperability and data exchange. The portal is one of five objectives established by the PHLIP Work Group.
The PHLIP Work Group is a collaborative effort within the public health laboratory community to establish effective public health data exchange through standards-based interoperability. Sharing of data across public health laboratories is essential for planning strategies, public health reporting, and responding to outbreaks and events. National harmonization of vocabulary used for test identifications (laboratory procedures) and test results must be achieved if public health laboratories at all levels (local, state, and federal) are to have full interoperability and data sharing.
The initial charge of the PHLIP Work Group will be to accumulate and assemble a harmonized knowledge base of LOINC codes for test identifications and SNOMED-CT concept IDs for test results in an accessible database. The APHL/CDC PHLIP Portal will help accomplish this as rapidly as possible, with minimum cost and disruption to ongoing laboratory activities by automating much of the harmonization process.
The proposed poster will present an overview of the PHLIP Work Group, its members and participating laboratories, and its five major objectives. It also will provide the development process of the APHL/CDC PHLIP Portal and the outcomes of implementation. While focusing on the vocabulary harmonization processes enhanced by the portal, the proposed poster will also detail the technical specifications of the portal, the database design for accumulated vocabularies, and related web-based surveys and results published by the PHLIP Work Group.
The expected outcomes for the portal implementation include:
▪ Enable web-based vocabulary reconciliation and present guidelines related to vocabulary encoding and messaging.
▪ Enable users to query and research code sets to assist vocabulary implementers in selecting correct LOINC/SNOMED-CT value sets for reportable diseases.
▪ Serve as a hub for vocabulary subject matter experts to coach the owner of the uploaded data sets with feedback and suggested corrections based on the comparative analysis.
▪ Be a gateway tool for eventual incorporation into a larger Public Health Laboratory Resource Portal that will allow users to data mine a variety of resources within the public health realm including web-based surveys and other informational content provided by APHL, CDC, and other partners.