Table 1.

Some of the EHR functionalities that can support infectious disease management, surveillance, prevention, and control

Functionality	Examples
Capturing and reporting of structured data of interest to the facility	Patients with possible contagious diseases requiring isolation
	Compliance with the central line bundle
Decision support at the point of care	Pneumovax and influenza vaccine reminders
	Alerts to restrict use of broad-spectrum antibiotics or provide alternatives to an indwelling urinary catheter
Supporting surveillance functions	Alerts to ICPs about MDRO or epidemiologically significant new isolates of interest
	Regular reports on trend in HAI, MDRO, reportable diseases, and antimicrobial use patterns
Standards that allow for interoperability	Use of HL7 messages to exchange data with surveillance software
	Use of data vocabularies such as LOINC/SNOMED for microbiology data

ICP, Infection control professional; MDRO, multidrug-resistant organism; HAI, health care-associated infection; HL7, Health Level 7; LOINC, Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes; SNOMED, Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine³⁷