Glossary of Public Health Informatics Organizations, Activities, and Terms

News | Partners | Policy Statements | Staff Contacts

»	Health IT Organizations
»	Health IT Activities
»	Health IT Terms and Acronyms
»	PHIN-Related Terminology

Health IT Organizations

Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC or ONCHIT)
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology provides leadership for the development and nationwide implementation of an interoperable health information technology infrastructure. For more information, visit http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/.

American Health Information Community
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the membership for the American Health Information Community (the Community) in 2005. The Community was formed to advance efforts to reach the Bush administration's call for most Americans to have electronic health records within 10 years. The community is a federally chartered commission that provides input and recommendations to HHS on how to make health records digital and interoperable and ensure that the privacy and security of the records are protected. For more information, visit http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/ahic.html.

Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ)
The agency's mission is to improve the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of healthcare for all Americans. AHRQ's initiative on health information technology (health IT) is a key element of the nation's 10-year strategy to bring healthcare into the 21st century by advancing the use of IT. The AHRQ initiative includes more than $166 million in grants and contracts in 41 states to support and stimulate investment in health IT, especially in rural and underserved areas. For more information, visit http://healthit.ahrq.gov.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Public Health Informatics (NCPHI)
The National Center for Public Health Informatics supports the detection, monitoring, analysis, alerting, communication, and response of vital public health information. NCPHI provides leadership in establishing and ensuring security and reliability standards for all CDC data, and provides systems interoperability standards to essential CDC information technology resources. For more information, visit www.cdc.gov/ncphi.

Public Health Data Standards Consortium
The overall goal of the Public Health Data Standards Consortium is to develop, promote, and implement data standards for population health practice and research. For more information, visit www.phdatastandards.info.

eHealth Initiative
The eHealth Initiative and the Foundation for eHealth Initiative are independent, nonprofit affiliated organizations engaging stakeholders (e.g., public and private clinical and public health organizations, academic and research institutions, industry, etc.) to define and then implement specific actions that will address the quality, safety, and efficiency challenges to our healthcare system through the use of interoperable IT. For more information, visit http://www.ehealthinitiative.org.

ESRI
ESRI is the leading developer of geographical information systems (GIS) in the world. NACCHO is working with ESRI to explore current HIT capacity and trends at the local level and will also work to identify and disseminate best practices of LHDs with innovative uses of GIS. For more information, visit www.esri.com.

Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS)
HIMSS is the healthcare industry's membership organization focused on providing leadership for the optimal use of healthcare information technology and management systems. For more information, visit www.himss.org.

American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
ANSI coordinates the development and use of standards in the United States across a range of business sectors, including healthcare. ANSI has recently formed the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) that will work with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) on the breakthrough areas that are under consideration by the American Health Information Community (AHIC). The panel was formed to harmonize the consensus-based standards necessary to enable the widespread interoperability of healthcare information in the United States. For more information, visit www.ansi.org.

National Association for Public Health Information Technology (NAPHIT)
NAPHIT is a nonprofit organization that supports leaders in public health information technology (e.g., CIOs) by providing venues to exchange ideas and experiences, discuss and shape current public health information policy, and learn about tools and technologies that help these leaders better support public health. For more information, visit www.naphit.org.

Health IT Activities

PHII Business Process Analysis Project
NACCHO is collaborating with the Public Health Informatics Institute to develop business processes for local public health activities. Next steps include securing funding to continue to link the informatics needs to these business processes so that LHDs can approach informatics vendors with the information they need to make wise choices. For more information, visit www.phii.org.

Informatics Competencies
In September 2005, the CDC awarded two Centers of Excellence in Public Health Informatics to improve the public's health through research related to health information and information technology (e.g., better use of electronic or computerized information systems). The Center at Harvard Medical School is developing a computer-based system designed to rapidly identify disease outbreaks using patient and other medical records. The Center at the University of Washington is working on two major research projects that focus on improving public health surveillance and epidemic detection methods and the development of an interactive digital knowledge management system. For more information, visit www.chip.org/research/about_us.htm and www.nwcphp.org/about-nwcphp/faculty.

RWJF InfoLinks Program
This program is designed to accelerate the innovative and effective use of information technology by state and local public health agencies. Twenty-one grants of up to $100,000 were awarded to state and local health departments and public health institutes for 12-month projects. The grantee sites will work with healthcare providers to improve the use of regional data sharing networks or health information exchanges. For more information, visit www.informationlinks.org.

Health IT Terms and Acronyms

HIS – Health Information System
The National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics describes HIS as "a comprehensive, knowledge-based system capable of providing information to all who need it to make sound decisions about health. Such a system can help realize the public interest related to disease prevention, health promotion, and population health." For more information, visit http://www.himss.org/ASP/index.asp.

HIT - Health Information Technology
HHS describes HIT as the tangible technical aspects of a health information system, including network backbones such as the Internet in its present and future versions; the World Wide Web, wireless connections, hardware, Internet appliances, and handheld devices, as well as applications for information management, decision-support tools, communication, and transactional programs. Also involved are technical capabilities in areas such as bandwidth and latency.(1) For more information, visit www.hhs.gov/healthit.

Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN)
HHS describes NHIN as an Internet-based architecture that links disparate healthcare information systems to allow patients, physicians, hospitals, community health centers, and public health agencies across the country to share clinical information securely. For more information, visit www.hhs.gov/healthit.

Health Information Exchanges (HIE) and Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs)
Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) are organizations that support the exchange of personal health information. Also known as Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs), these organizations support the primary goal of the NHIN for interoperable health information systems. RHIOs will be the local collaborative of public/private sector health information exchange partners to facilitate data exchange between EHRs and public health. It is critical that LHDs have representation and are actively involved with RHIOs. Local public health involvement can increase the efficient use and standardization of information that is transmitted to public health, and increase the reliability of data exchange with our partners.

Electronic Health Records
Electronic Health Records are a repository of electronically maintained information about an individual's lifetime health status and healthcare, stored such that it can be accessible to authorized users (e.g., physicians, pharmacists, hospitals, home care) of the record. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is leading efforts to reach President Bush's call for most Americans to have electronic health records within 10 years. This initiative is part of the movement to advance electronic health information exchange by making health records digital and interoperable, and ensure that the privacy and security of those records are protected, in a smooth, market-led way. For more information, visit http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/.

BioSense
BioSense is the national program designed to improve the nation's capabilities for real-time biosurveillance and situational awareness. For more information, visit http://www.cdc.gov/biosense/.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued new national health information privacy standards. The new regulations provide protection for the privacy of certain individually identifiable health data, referred to as protected health information (PHI). For more information, visit http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/.

Interoperability
According to the Interoperability Clearing House, "interoperability is the ability of information systems to operate in conjunction with each other encompassing communication protocols, hardware software, application, and data compatibility layers. With interoperable electronic health records, always-current medical information could be available wherever and whenever the patient and attending health professional needed it. At the same time, EHRs would also provide access to treatment information to help clinicians as they care for patients." For more information, visit www.ichnet.org and http://www.cdc.gov/phin.

LOINC® (Logical Observations, Identifiers, Names, Codes)
LOINC is a clinical term important for laboratory test orders and results, produced by the Regenstrief Institute. For more information, visit www.regenstrief.org/loinc/ or www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/loinc_main.html.

Systematized Nomenclature of Human and Veterinary Medicine (SNOMED)
SNOMED is a standardized vocabulary system for medical databases. Current modules contain more than 144,000 terms and are available in at least 12 languages. SNOMED has the potential to become the standard vocabulary for speech recognition systems and computer-based patient records. For more information, visit www.snomed.org or www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/Snomed/snomed_announcement.html.

Health Alert Network (HAN)
HAN is a strong national program, providing vital health information and the infrastructure to support the dissemination of that information at the state and local levels and beyond. The Health Alert Network will function as PHIN's Health Alert component. For more information, visit http://www.phppo.cdc.gov/han/.

Knowledge Management
The American Health Information Management Association describes knowledge management as "capturing, organizing, and storing knowledge and experiences of individual workers and groups within an organization and making this information available to others in the organization." For more information, visit www.ahima.org.

Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
GIS is a collection of computer hardware, software, and geographic data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information. ESRI is the leading developer of GIS. ESRI GIS provides a common analytical framework in which public health authorities can understand problems and formulate a response, improving incident management and health planning. For more information, visit www.gis.com or www.esri.com.

ARCVIEW
ArcView is full-featured GIS software for visualizing, analyzing, creating, and managing data with a geographic component. For more information, visit http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcview/index.html.

Geo-coding
Geo-coding is the process of assigning geographic coordinates (e.g., latitude and longitude) to street addresses, as well as other points and features. The features can then be mapped and entered into Geographic Information Systems. To learn more, visit the Harvard Geo-coding Project at www.hsph.harvard.edu/thegeocodingproject/webpage/monograph/ and The National Center for Health Statistics at www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/otheract/gis/pastreports.htm.

Health Level 7 (HL7)
HL7 is one of several American National Standards Institute (ANSI) accredited Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) operating in the healthcare arena. Health Level Seven's domain is clinical and administrative data. For more information, visit http://www.hl7.org/.

Environmental Health Tracking (EHT)
EHT is the ongoing collection, integration, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of data on environmental hazards; exposures to those hazards; and related health effects. The goal of environmental health tracking is to provide information that can be used to plan, apply, and evaluate actions to prevent and control environmentally related diseases. For more information, visit www.cdc.gov/nceh/tracking/. (1.) Committee on Enhancing the Internet for Health Applications: Technical Requirements and Implementation Strategies, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications, National Research Council. 2000. "Networking health: Prescriptions for the Internet." Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Available online at http://www.nap.edu/books/0309068436/html/.

PHIN-Related Terminology

Analysis, Visualization, and Reporting (AVR)

To analyze, display, report, and map accumulated data and share data and technologies for analysis and visualization with other public health partners.

Outbreak Management (OM)

The capture and management of information associated with the investigation and containment of a disease outbreak or public health emergency are primary functions of public health.

Countermeasure Response Administration (CRA)

Systems that manage and track measures taken to contain an outbreak or event and to provide protection against a possible outbreak or event. This PHIN functional area also includes multiple-dose delivery of countermeasures (anthrax vaccine and antibiotics), adverse events monitoring, patient follow-up, isolation and quarantine, and links to distribution vehicles (such as the Strategic National Stockpile).

Early Event Detection (EED)

This component of PHIN Preparedness uses case and suspect case reporting along with statistical surveillance of health-related data to support the earliest possible detection of events that may signal a public health emergency.

Partner Communications and Alerting

A significant goal of the PHIN Preparedness requirements is to assist with developing a nationwide network of integrated communications systems capable of rapid distribution of health alerts, secure collaboration among a defined set of public health professionals involved in an outbreak or event, and the broad sharing of information with the public.

Cross-Functional Components

Several technical capabilities, or components, are common across each of the PHIN Preparedness functional areas and are necessary to fully support the preparedness requirements. These components include secure message transport, public health directory and directory exchange, message addressing, the use of object identifiers (OIDs), vocabulary standards, data modeling standards, operational policies and procedures, system security and availability, and privacy requirements.

Connecting Laboratory Systems

This PHIN functional area focuses on the interface between laboratory systems and other systems both internal and external to the public health laboratory.