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ISDS Annual Conference Proceedings 2012. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
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ISDS 2012 Conference Abstracts

Fusion Analytics: A Data Integration System for Public
Health and Medical Disaster Response Decision
Support
Dina B. Passman*

ASPR/OPEO, HHS, Washington, DC, USA

Objective
The objective of this demonstration is to show conference atten-

dees how they can integrate, analyze, and visualize diverse data type
data from across a variety of systems by leveraging an off-the-shelf
enterprise business intelligence (EBI) solution to support decision-
making in disasters.

Introduction
Fusion Analytics is the data integration system developed by the

Fusion Cell at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS), Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Re-
sponse (ASPR). Fusion Analytics meaningfully augments traditional
public and population health surveillance reporting by providing web-
based data analysis and visualization tools.

Methods
Fusion Analytics serves as a one-stop-shop for the web-based data

visualizations of multiple real-time data sources within ASPR. The
24-7 web availability makes it an ideal analytic tool for situational
awareness and response allowing stakeholders to access the portal
from any internet-enabled device without installing any software. The
Fusion Analytics data integration system was built using off-the-shelf
EBI software. Fusion Analytics leverages the full power of statistical
analysis software and delivers reports to users in a secure web-based
environment. Fusion Analytics provides an example of how public
health staff can develop and deploy a robust public health informat-

ics solution using an off-the shelf product and with limited develop-
ment funding. It also provides the unique example of a public health
information system that combines patient data for traditional disease
surveillance with manpower and resource data to provide overall de-
cision support for federal public health and medical disaster response
operations.

Conclusions
We are currently in a unique position within public health. One the

one hand, we have been gaining greater and greater access to elec-
tronic data of all kinds over the last few years. On the other, we are
working in a time of reduced government spending to support lever-
aging this data for decision support with robust analytics and visual-
izations. Fusion Analytics provides an opportunity for attendees to
see how various types of data are integrated into a single application
for population health decision support. It also can provide them with
ideas of how they can use their own staff to create analyses and re-
ports that support their public health activities.

Keywords
Situational awareness; Public health informatics; Disaster response

*Dina B. Passman
E-mail: dina.passman@hhs.gov

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 5(1):e207, 2013