Disease Investigation Technology Collaborative

The Disease Investigation Technology Collaborative meets once a month to share best practices around the various technologies used in case management, investigation, and general disease tracking.

The group is co-hosted by Linux Foundation Public Health, Resolve to Save Lives, and CSTE. Attendance is limited to public health authorities and staff at the national nonprofits supporting them. We meet on the last Tuesday of every month from 12-1:30 PT.

Past agendas and speakers

Roundtable discussion: the future of COVID case investigation systems

Every jurisdiction has had to spin up new or enhanced cased investigation systems to handle COVID-19. But what are they planning to do with these systems now? Join us for a roundtable discussion of how different jurisdictions at the state and county levels are thinking about this challenge.

Panel: Automating notifications within the CI/CT workflow

The panel shared about lessons learned from automating CI/CT operations. They shared some details on the “how”, meaning technical implementation, and the “what”, such as automated disease notification and hands-off reporting/data input from cases/contacts.

Discussion: Evolving data systems

All participants joined in discussion about how things have evolved for jurisdictions in the last few months, including updates on their data system thoughts going forward. Some jurisdictions talked about continuing with Salesforce while others had started to move away from it, some were keeping COVID separate in their data systems while others were integrating it into their normal surveillance systems, and everyone shared how they were managing the uncertain climate PHAs find themselves in today.

Compare and contrast: State and local surveillance systems

These two meetings discussed the relationship between local and state level surveillance systems. We had the local-level conversation one month and state-level the following, with a mix of urban/rural and home rule/centralized jurisdictions involved. Local health data system experiences, needs, and challenges are quite different from the more commonly discussed state level systems. On top of that, resources to build up public health data systems often go into state-level surveillance systems, and that the needs and priorities at the local health can differ from what these systems are geared towards (e.g. surveillance systems may not have case management functionality). In these conversations panelists shared their experiences with data systems that support the work of local vs. state health departments, including challenges, and what data system features would make the work easier.