The Promise of Electronic Case Reporting

Abstract

Public health surveillance is focused on the detection of acute, chronic, and emerging threats to the health of the population to direct disease control and prevention efforts. 1 Public health surveillance relies on health care providers to report to public health agencies conditions or outbreaks that may impact the broader population. This case reporting is mandated through laws and regulations at the state and local levels. Notification of cases to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is facilitated by agreements between states and the federal government. 2 Historically, case reporting has been based on paper reports or Internet-based entry of reports to state health department systems, but these reports are often slow or incomplete and place a substantial burden of work on health care providers and public health agencies. 3 The future of surveillance is electronic case reporting (eCR), by which cases of reportable conditions are automatically generated from electronic health record (EHR) systems and transmitted to public health agencies for review and action. eCR holds promise for enhancing the quality and effectiveness of public health surveillance. 4 Greater use of eCR could result in (1) more complete and accurate case data in near real time for public health action; (2) earlier detection of cases, permitting earlier intervention and lowered transmission of disease; (3) improved detection of outbreaks to allow earlier investigation and, potentially, earlier identification of risk factors for the spread of disease; and (4) creation of a new infrastructure to support rapid reporting of newly recognized and emerging conditions. In this commentary, we review the promise of eCR and present our vision for a nationally interoperable eCR system that allows for timely reporting to public health and information sharing among jurisdictions. Coordination between health care providers and public health agencies is essential for the monitoring, control, and prevention of disease and is best carried out through a bidirectional exchange of information. In 2009, the US Congress passed the Health Information Technology for Economic and

Leveraging public health's participation in a Health Information Exchange to improve communicable disease reporting

“…The expanded adoption of HIEs promises to improve access to data and automate its extraction, making it easier to collect required data through electronic request from a single source. The pre-populated CDR form service investigated in this study is an example of an intervention that aims to reduce the burden of information-gathering with consequent quality improvements [34]. As noted earlier, ELR systems can improve timeliness of reporting to PHAs [4,10]; expanded connectivity between health record and ELR systems—as possible through HIEs—might further enhance reportable condition data capture and its delivery to PHAs.…”

An Assessment of Information Exchange Practices, Challenges, and Opportunities to Support US Disease Surveillance in 3 States

“…10 Electronic case reporting (eCR) is defined as the generation and electronic transmission of case reports for reportable conditions from the electronic health record (EHR) to relevant public health authorities for review and action. 11 eCR likely represents the way public health surveillance will be conducted in the future and is an opportunity to work with partners in healthcare to promote data standards across the health enterprise.…”

Reducing liver cancer risk beginning at birth: experiences of preventing chronic hepatitis B virus infection in China

“…Although many surveillance systems still rely on paper and pencil for data collection, use of data from sources such as electronic medical records, electronic case reporting, [34][35][36][37][38][39][40] and clinical laboratory information systems (LIMS) can significantly improve reporting speed, enhance data quality, and reduce workload.…”