Homeland Security

Pennsylvania

In most places, it could be days or even weeks before public health investigators detect a disease outbreak. Not in Pennsylvania. State health officials created a secure, Web-based disease-reporting system that allows investigators to detect an outbreak within hours. With funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Pennsylvania Department of Health became the first state agency to develop and use an electronic disease-reporting system that collects data at the source-laboratories, physicians' offices, hospitals-and makes it available on the Web to state public health officials almost instantaneously.

Historically, disease surveillance has been a slow, paper-intensive business. Patients seek care at clinics or hospitals, where tests are ordered and specimens are drawn and sent to laboratories. Laboratory personnel report their findings to physicians. When communicable diseases are diagnosed, they report their findings to public health departments.

The Pennsylvania National Electronic Disease Surveillance System, or PA-NEDSS, eliminated a reporting system that required laboratories and physicians to mail reports to the state health department, which in turn sorted and re-mailed the reports to field investigators.

-Katherine McIntire Peters

WHY IT WON

Allows state health investigators to receive data on disease outbreaks as soon as laboratories, hospitals and physicians report findings.

WHY IT'S INNOVATIVE

Eliminated a time-consuming, paper-based reporting system.

WHAT DIFFERENCE IT HAS MADE

Helped break down communication barriers between state and local health investigators without compromising patient confidentiality.