Category Archives: data modernization

08Sep / 2020

COVID-19 exposure notifications expand among public health community

The United States data connections

The emergence of COVID-19 required swift action to develop systems and processes that support public health agencies and their pandemic response efforts. This year APHL has worked to create new connections, develop new message formats, standardize language and host a variety of solutions to aid in the COVID-19 response. This blog post is the third in a series that outlines and explains these efforts.

APHL recently announced a new effort to bring COVID-19 exposure notifications to the public health community. Through this collaboration with Apple, Google and Microsoft, APHL has enabled state and territorial public health agencies to provide COVID-19 exposure notifications to residents who choose to receive information regarding COVID-19 exposures in their area.

Today we are excited to announce another step toward expanding exposure notifications in the United States. To reduce the effort needed by public health agencies to bring exposure notification to their jurisdiction, APHL has made available a multi-tenant verification server running on Google Cloud.

Reducing boundaries between jurisdictions

Since July, several states have launched apps using Apple and Google’s Exposure Notifications System (ENS) to augment contact tracing efforts for the disease. Two states have launched an app using ENS with a national key server, hosted by APHL. The national key server allows exposure notifications to work between users who have applications published by different states, which enables the system to work across the US. It assures users can determine when they may have been exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 from other states.

As a part of ENS, a verification server is necessary to ensure a user has received a positive test result before uploading their temporary exposure keys to the national key server. Before, each public health agency needed to stand up their own verification server and decide on a verification approach. Having one verification server reduces the additional time and complexity to deploy ENS.

The new multi-tenant verification server provides each state and territory secure access to generate single-use verification codes. These verification codes could be provided to the user by a contact tracer or case investigator—over the phone or via SMS (text message)—after they have verified a positive test result. This server does not store personally identifiable information, but can send verification codes via SMS to make it easier for users to enter the verification code in their app.

The multi-tenant verification server reduces the burden on busy public health agencies and enables more rapid adoption of exposure notification. APHL, as a trusted public health partner, is a key conduit in delivering this solution to the public health community to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

The post COVID-19 exposure notifications expand among public health community appeared first on APHL Lab Blog.

Posted by in All Posts, covid 19, data modernization, Data Sharing, infectious disease, informatics, public health data

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13Apr / 2020

APHL, partners garner $550M for data modernization initiative

Image depicting data transfer

Like many aspects of public health, the effective, efficient movement of public health data has been chronically underfunded. Faced with this perpetual issue—combined with a sharp increase in data production from new laboratory techniques that have added great volumes of data to an overburdened system—APHL joined with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, the National Association of Public Health Statistics and Information Services, and the Health Information and Management Systems Society in 2019 to engage in the first serious effort to secure federal funding for improved handling of public health data.

APHL contributed to the production of materials that quickly and easily explained the problem and urged Congress to provide $1 billion over the next ten years, at a rate of $100 million per year. With these materials in hand, APHL met with interested partners on Capitol Hill to press the case for funding. It also organized a Hill briefing for Congressional staff where subject matter experts, such as APHL member Dr. Joanne Bartkus, presented on the challenges with existing data handling processes. Dr. Anne Schuchat, Principal Deputy Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), highlighted these same challenges in virtually every hearing where she testified on public health emergencies.

These educational activities culminated when Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro took up data modernization as one of her key initiatives in the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. Congresswoman DeLauro successfully included the first installment of $100 million for CDC to pursue the data modernization initiative in the Labor-HHS appropriations bill for fiscal year (FY) 2020. This is an unparalleled achievement in the first year of any significant effort, and one made even more remarkable considering that data management is not a particularly trendy or exciting topic.

Though the Senate never produced a Labor-HHS bill for FY 2020, but indicated that it would not accept the House amount of $100 million for data modernization, APHL persevered, continuing to work closely with Senate staff to advance the funding of the data modernization initiative. Ultimately, Congresswoman DeLauro was able to include $50 million in the final version of the bill. The COVID-19 response allowed for an additional $500 million to be directed to data modernization, and it appears that the balance of the $1 billion ($450 million) could be included in the next emergency supplemental funding bill.

APHL continues to pursue additional annual federal funding for the data management initiative, beginning with fiscal year 2021, and production of the required CDC report to Congress detailing how these federal funds will be expended in 2020 and the spend plan for the subsequent nine years.

While APHL looks forward to more nimble response to public health emergencies, such as COVID-19, due to improved public health data management, the association remains energized by the benefits to result from the $550 million already allocated to the data modernization initiative.

The post APHL, partners garner $550M for data modernization initiative appeared first on APHL Lab Blog.

Posted by in advocacy, All Posts, APHL in Action, congress, data, data modernization, federal budget, federal policy, informatics, Public Policy

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