What to know
2023 Progress Summary
The Public Health Data Strategy (PHDS) was launched in 2023 with an ambitious set of 15 milestones. At the end of the year, 12 milestones had been met and work continues on the remaining three.
Meeting the 12 milestones represents tangible success and CDC continues to work towards milestones that are both ambitious and achievable. See the status of the milestones.
The work done to meet those 2023 milestones has made a measurable difference. We are now better able to respond to existing health threats and to detect and respond to future public health threats. Progress made in 2023 includes:
- Laboratory data available for over 300 million Americans available:
- Improving national situational awareness across conditions.1
- Improving national situational awareness across conditions.1
- Over four million accessed data on respiratory illnesses:
- Enabling greater preparedness for respiratory threats.
- Enabling greater preparedness for respiratory threats.
- Over 30,900 healthcare facilities sending electronic case reports:
- Providing faster detection of health anomalies.2
- Includes more than 380 critical access hospitals (CAHs).
- Providing faster detection of health anomalies.2
- Over 90 conditions tracked in case data dashboards:
- Reducing time spent cleaning and visualizing data.
- Reducing time spent cleaning and visualizing data.
- 92% of state public health laboratories exchanging test orders and results:
- Enabling faster exchange of critical laboratory data.
- Exchange is with at least one healthcare partner.
- Exchange is for at least one laboratory program.3
- Enabling faster exchange of critical laboratory data.
- 52% of jurisdictions receiving electronic case data directly:
- Reducing burden to manually ingest case data.4
- Data are input into disease surveillance systems.
- Reducing burden to manually ingest case data.4
PHDS 2023 Milestones and Their Status
Milestone
Status
Impact
STLTs enabled to submit a generic core case data feed that can be used for national disease notification.
44 jurisdictions enabled to submit generic core case data and have been onboarded to the GenV2 Message Mapping Guide.
Reduced reporting burden on STLTs as additional jurisdictions able to electronically report case data to CDC in a consistent format.
32 jurisdictions are ingesting eCR data into disease surveillance systems.
34 jurisdictions ingesting eCR data.
10 additional jurisdictions reduced their manual burden to process case data into their systems and enabled near real-time disease surveillance, a 38% increase from the 2022 baseline.
90% of Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity (ELC) recipients are connected to one or multiple intermediaries such as APHL Informatics Messaging Services, ReportStream or Health Information Exchanges for laboratory data.
95% of ELC recipients are connected to at least one intermediary.
Six additional ELC recipients able to maintain timely situational awareness and respond faster in public health emergencies through interoperable and automated laboratory data exchange.
90% of state public health laboratories have implemented Electronic Test Orders and Results (ETOR) with at least one healthcare partner for at least one laboratory program.
92% of state public health laboratories have implemented ETOR.
Nine additional state public health laboratories able to reduce manual entry of test orders from faxes sent by providers.
75% of CDC infectious disease laboratories send laboratory test results to external partners electronically such as using Electronic Laboratory Reporting, CDC Specimen Test Order and Reporting or an intermediary.
More than 90% of CDC infectious disease laboratories send laboratory test results electronically.
External partners able to quickly receive laboratory test results to enable rapid awareness of public health threats.
Reduced time to send mortality data to and receive coded cause of death data from CDC for 12–15 jurisdictions through use of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®)-based exchange.
One jurisdiction onboarded to FHIR-based exchange for mortality data. Milestone on track for completion in 2024.
Technical foundation created and one jurisdiction onboarded to accelerate sending and receiving of death data, critical for public health analyses and decision making.
CDC receives and ensures access to commercial laboratory data from at least two major national commercial laboratories to enable situational awareness across multiple conditions.
CDC receives data from two major commercial laboratories.
Improved national CDC situational awareness by increasing laboratory data coverage across geographies and conditions.
Milestone
Status
Impact
CAHs in production with eCR increased to 25%, up from 20% in 2022.
28% of CAHs in production with eCR.
76 additional CAHs able to provide awareness of emerging health threats in all parts of the nation, including rural communities.
Reusable technologies to link multiple data streams such as case and laboratory made available to all jurisdictions and deployed by at least one STLT.
Reusable technologies made available, deployed in L.A. County.
STLTs and CDC programs able to conduct robust disease surveillance by having access to timely data on more than 90 notifiable conditions.
Milestone
Status
Impact
Minimum viable product for centralized data dissemination platform developed in partnership with CDC’s Office of Readiness and Response to share timely and actionable data publicly.
Respiratory Viral Data Channel released.
General public able to access timely public health information for critical public health threats such as COVID-19, influenza and RSV and enable more educated actions/responses.
Data and visualizations available within 2–3 days instead of from 5 to 90 days or more for CDC programs and STLTs since time of receiving case data at CDC for at least one nationally notifiable condition such as viral hepatitis.
Dashboards for nationally notifiable conditions refreshed daily and made available to STLTs and all CDC programs.
STLTs and CDC programs able to conduct robust disease surveillance by having access to timely data on more than 90 notifiable conditions.
Milestone
Status
Impact
CDC selects a Qualified Health Information Network and has identified at least two public health use cases for Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, establishing a pathway for data exchange with healthcare systems and providers.
Two use cases identified (case and laboratory data). Milestone on track for completion in 2024.
CDC has begun building foundations to enable faster exchange of more interoperable data between public health and health care.
Standard language and terms for data protection and use agreed upon with public health partners for core data sources, consistent with CDC Advisory Committee to the Director Data and Surveillance Workgroup recommendations.
Standard language drafted. Milestone on track for completion in 2024.
CDC will be able to provide national data standards for core data sources through collaboration with public health partners, enabling easier public health data use and access.
New data access agreement established to enable easier sharing of emergency department data from National Syndromic Surveillance Program across STLTs and CDC programs.
Data use agreement to enable sharing of ED data established.
CDC programs will be able to better use emergency department data already collected by CDC to make it easier to create public health insights and reduce duplicative data collection.
Minimal data elements necessary for public health response defined for at least case and laboratory data, in collaboration with STLT partners and CDC programs.
Minimal data elements for case and laboratory data are under review.
CDC programs will be able to syndicate and collect a standardized set of data elements for two core data sources, reducing reporting burden for external partners.
- Compared to more than 285 million Americans covered by laboratory data collected and made available by CDC in early 2023 (Source: CDC estimates)
- Compared to approximately 300 CAHs, and more than 25,000 healthcare facilities using eCR in early 2023 (Source: eCR factsheet, CDC estimates)
- Increase of 18 percentage points compared to 74% of state public health laboratories in early 2023; includes ETOR implementation through web portal, direct integration and intermediaries (Source: CDC estimates)
- Increase of 14 percentage points compared to 38% of STLTs in early 2023 that were ingesting eCR data into disease surveillance systems (Source: CDC estimates)