Developing the National Public Health Surveillance and Biosurveillance Registry for Human Health : Knowledge Management and Implications for Public Health Informatics

In accord with a presidential priority to improve our national capabilities to rapidly detect; accurately characterize; quickly respond to; and provide monitoring of incidents of public health consequence, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to define the human health component of a national biosurveillance system. A necessary step towards developing a national biosurveillance system and improving coordination among surveillance experts is determining the number and type of surveillance activities currently available. To achieve this goal, CDC created a web based catalogue of 285 of its biosurveillance activities across domains that impact human health (e.g., human, environmental, food, and vector). This catalogue, called the National Public Health Surveillance and Biosurveillance Registry for Human Health (NPHSB) Registry, is the first step in establishing an accurate view of the current state of biosurveillance capability across the Federal Government. The Registry contains information about five types of surveillance activities: Surveillance systems; Registries; Surveillance programs; Collaboratives established to advance surveillance science and practice; and Tools that support surveillance. Through the NPHSB Registry, CDC experts now have unprecedented access to critical information as they address a wide range of public health preparedness and response issues. With access to the Registry, state and local public health practitioners could have increased opportunities for data sharing and collaboration within the surveillance community. The development and implementation of the Registry was a complex undertaking, presenting opportunities and challenges for overall knowledge management across the phases of data collection, quality assurance, data analysis, reporting and dissemination. This presentation will describe approaches used to effectively manage information from the NPHSB Registry while discussing implications for public health informatics. These serve as ‘best practices' with widespread application for other agencies that want to establish a more comprehensive view of their biosuveillance assets.