FAQs

What is the Surveillance Data Platform?

The Surveillance Data Platform (SDP) is a secure, cloud-based platform that centralizes and shares common IT services needed for disease surveillance. As one of several CDC surveillance strategy initiatives, SDP seeks to improve public health outcomes by:

• Enhancing public health’s ability to manage, share, and analyze data and share capability;
• Reducing unnecessary burden on internal and external data partners; and
• Improving efficiency in public health data usage and tracking across CDC.

Why is CDC building the Surveillance Data Platform?

Disease surveillance across the U.S. public health system is an established partnership that operates through thousands of agencies. CDC generally does not collect disease surveillance information directly, but relies on state and local health departments.  To reduce the burden on data exchange, we embarked on a new IT solution to increase efficiency at CDC that supports and informs public health. The SDP builds the foundation for a future in which CDC can assemble services to create new capabilities in near real-time, allowing for a quicker response to public health emergencies.

What makes the Surveillance Data Platform different?

CDC is revolutionizing the way epidemiologists get, transfer, and use data. The Surveillance Data Platform is applying cutting-edge technology and best practices to critical public health challenges—from infectious disease to chronic disease, injuries, and other health conditions. A shared services approach will increase the quality and efficiency for sharing data inside and outside the agency.

How will the Surveillance Data Platform help public health programs?

Disease detectives (epidemiologists) and other public health professionals at state and local health departments currently submit data to CDC in multiple ways through multiple disease surveillance systems. Imagine what they could accomplish if they only had to do it one time? The vision for the SDP is to empower public health decision making by providing unified, systems-level informatics solutions that improve reporting efficiencies throughout the U.S. public health system.

SDP will provide services to multiple programs on a shared platform, enabling programs to access the best capabilities developed at CDC, something not possible before. Shared services available on a common platform will allow for integration of capabilities across CDC, facilitate innovation across the agency, and reduce the creation of redundant capabilities.

What shared services are available on the platform?

The first services offered during are the Vocabulary Service and Content-based Routing service. Both services are intended to trim tasks and save time.

• The Vocabulary service accelerates the process of developing public health data collection tools through transparent sharing of public health related questions and possible responses to these questions. By enabling reuse, the tool helps to reduce the number of different ways that CDC asks for similar information, thereby encouraging consistency and making it easier to answer these critical questions.
• The Content-based Routing service improves the ability of public health partners to make their data transfer efforts simpler and more efficient.

For more information about these services, See the Shared Services page.

What is next for the Surveillance Data Platform?

The first set of shared services, Vocabulary and Content-based Routing, are being released in 2017.  CDC plans to increase adoption of these initial services while exploring the sharing of other impactful services.  When the Surveillance Data Platform is fully realized in 2020, it promises to decrease the burden on partners to send and use data for all surveillance systems at CDC.

How can I learn more and get involved?

The SDP project team encourages all interested stakeholders and partners to learn more and to take advantages of the many opportunities to participate in helping to chart the future direction of the SDP.

To get involved, email us using the “Contact Us” page.

What is the Vocabulary service?

Often public health data collection is done by asking a standard set of questions, collecting the responses, and using the results to update alerts, make recommendations, or implement targeted programs to protect Americans.  The vocabulary service provides a repository to transparently share existing questions and possible responses to these questions. When needed, users may also author their own questions and responses, either from scratch, or using existing content as a starting point.

What type of content can I find in the Vocabulary service?

The Vocabulary service provides a repository of questions, response sets, and groupings of questions (forms and surveys), and provides visibility into which programs and surveillance systems are using this content. Vocabulary service users can search for existing content that meets their own data collection needs and, when needed, can also author their own content, either from scratch, or using existing content as a starting point.

Why use the Vocabulary service?

By reusing what others have done before, the Vocabulary service can make building data collection tools faster.  This reuse also enhances consistency by reducing the number of different ways that CDC asks for similar information.  Not only is it easier to answer questions asked the same way, this consistency also makes it easier to compare answers and see the big picture.

This should allow users to spend less time figuring out how to ask the right question and spend more time doing the important work of analyzing the results.

Who can use the Vocabulary service?

The Vocabulary service may be used by anyone to view its content.  Simply go to https://sdp-v.services.cdc.gov/ to start viewing existing content.

CDC programs, and their associated program partners, may use the service to author content that serves their data collection needs. Current users of this service include two disease components of CDC’s Emerging Infections Program (EIP):

1. The Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) – the principle foodborne component of EIP, and
2. The Active Bacterial Core surveillance (ABCs) program.

What if I want to author my own questions?

For disease detectives and other CDC public health partners, just contact your CDC program partner to discuss how to become a Vocabulary service “Author” to address your data collection needs. If you do not know who at the CDC to contact, go to our “Contact Us” page to submit your question. We will gladly assist.

How does the Vocabulary service integrate with other systems at CDC?

SDP shared services use open interfaces to foster integration with other Public Health Systems.

The SDP Vocabulary service currently integrates with the authoritative source for standard vocabularies for CDC and its public health partners, called Public Health Information Network Vocabulary Access and Distribution System (PHIN VADS).  Code Systems (such as Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC)), their codes, and most value sets housed in PHIN VADS are accessible to SDP-V users authoring their own vocabulary content.

How does the Vocabulary service encourage standardized wording across data collection instruments?

By transparently sharing questions and response sets already in use by the CDC and showing which programs and surveillance systems use them, this service allows users to capitalize on previous work. This speeds up the creation process and reduces variability. To address special data collection needs, Authors can extend existing content or create new content. This is a first step on an ongoing journey toward data harmonization and standardization.

What is the Content-based Routing service?

Currently, busy state health departments who track and monitor illness, injuries, and outbreaks submit data to CDC in multiple ways through multiple disease surveillance systems. The Content-based Routing service would cut down the work—enabling health departments to send data transmissions to a single receiving point at CDC, where a shared information technology (IT) service, working behind the scenes at CDC, automatically examines the incoming data, and securely sends it to the correct programs across at CDC.

What are the benefits of the Content-based Routing service?

The Content-based Routing service has four key benefits:

• Reduces reporting burden by providing public health partners a single point of transmission of surveillance data to the CDC;
• Improves efficiency by routing a single message to multiple CDC programs;
• Standardizes data submission efforts across CDC and public health partners; and
• Provides an IT foundation that can be built upon in the future to gain more efficiencies.

Who uses the Content-based Routing service?

The first CDC programs to use the Content-based routing service are the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) and Emerging Infections Program (EIP).

What message types will the Content-based Routing service be able to route?

While designed to be a general purpose service, the initial Content-based Routing service will route a specific type of public health data transmissions that contains foodborne disease case notifications and other supplemental data.

How will the Content-based Routing service expand in the future?

The Content-based Routing service provides foundational capabilities for additional services (such as data transformation or message testing and validation) that can be built in subsequent phases. The service can also be expanded by adding more users or message types.