PTT Advisor: A CDC-supported initiative to develop a mobile clinical laboratory decision support application for the iOS platform.

Objectives: This manuscript describes the development of PTT (Partial Thromboplastin Time) Advisor, one of the first of a handful of iOS-based mobile applications to be released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). PTT Advisor has been a collaboration between two groups at CDC (Informatics R&D and Laboratory Science), and one partner team (Clinical Laboratory Integration into Healthcare Collaborative - CLIHC). The application offers clinicians a resource to quickly select the appropriate follow-up tests to evaluate patients with a prolonged PTT and a normal Prothrombin Time (PT) laboratory result.

The role of public health informatics in enhancing public health surveillance.

Public health surveillance has benefitted from, and has often pioneered, informatics analyses and solutions. However, the field of informatics also serves other facets of public health including emergency response, environmental health, nursing, and administration. Public health informatics has been defined as the systematic application of information and computer science and technology to public health practice, research, and learning.

A Public Health Grid (PHGrid): Architecture and value proposition for 21st century public health.

Purpose: This manuscript describes the value of and proposal for a high-level architectural framework for a Public Health Grid (PHGrid), which the authors feel has the capability to afford the public health community a robust technology infrastructure for secure and timely data, information, and knowledge exchange, not only within the public health domain, but between public health and the overall health care system.

Methods: The CDC facilitated multiple Proof-of-Concept (PoC) projects, leveraging an open-source-based software development methodology, to test four hypotheses with regard to this high-level framework. The outcomes of the four PoCs in combination with the use of the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF) and the newly emerging Federal Segment Architecture Methodology (FSAM) was used to develop and refine a high-level architectural framework for a Public Health Grid infrastructure.

Using secure web services to visualize poison center data for nationwide biosurveillance: a case study.

Objectives: Real-time surveillance systems are valuable for timely response to public health emergencies. It has been challenging to leverage existing surveillance systems in state and local communities, and, using a centralized architecture, add new data sources and analytical capacity. Because this centralized model has proven to be difficult to maintain and enhance, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been examining the ability to use a federated model based on secure web services architecture, with data stewardship remaining with the data provider.