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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

Sharing Public Health Information with Non-Public
Health Partners
Wayne Loschen*, Rekha Holtry, Kalman Hazins and Sheryl Happel Lewis

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, USA

Objective
The objective of this project is to provide a technical mechanism

for information to be easily and securely shared between public health
ESSENCE users and non-public health partners; specifically, emer-
gency management, law enforcement, and the first responder com-
munity. This capability allows public health officials to analyze
incoming data and create interpreted information to be shared with
others. These interpretations are stored securely and can be viewed by
approved users and captured by authorized software systems. This
project provides tools that can enhance emergency management sit-
uational awareness of public health events. It also allows external
partners a mechanism for providing feedback to support public health
investigations.

Introduction
Automated Electronic Disease Surveillance has become a com-

mon tool for most public health practitioners. Users of these systems
can analyze and visualize data coming from hospitals, schools, and a
variety of sources to determine the health of their communities. The
insights that users gain from these systems would be valuable infor-
mation for emergency managers, law enforcement, and other non-
public health officials. Disseminating this information, however, can
be difficult due to lack of secure tools and guidance policies. This ab-
stract describes the development of tools necessary to support infor-
mation sharing between public health and partner organizations.

Methods
The project initially brought together public health and emergency

management officials to determine current gaps in technology and
policy that prevent sharing of information on a consistent basis. Of-
ficials from across the National Capital Region (NCR) in Maryland,
Virginia, and the District of Columbia determined that a web portal
in which public health information could be securely posted on and
captured by non-public health users (humans and computer systems)
would be best. The development team then found open source tools,
such as the Pebble blogging system, that would allow information to
be posted, tagged, and searched in an easily navigable site. The sys-

tem also provided RSS feeds both on the site as whole and specific
tags to support notification. The team made modifications to the sys-
tem to incorporate spring security features to allow the site to be se-
curely hosted requiring usernames and passwords for access. Once
the Pebble system was completed and deployed, the NCR’s aggre-
gated ESSENCE system was adapted to allow users to submit daily
reports and post time series images to the new site. An additional fea-
ture was created to post visualizations every evening to the site sum-
marizing the day’s reports.

Results
The system has been in testing since March of 2012 and users of

the system have provided valuable feedback. Based on the success
of the tests, public health users in the NCR have begun working on
the policy component of the project to determine when and how it
should be used. Modifications to the system since deployment have
included a single sign on capability for ESSENCE users and the de-
sire to allow other features of ESSENCE to be posted beyond time se-
ries graphs, such as GIS maps and statistical reports.

Conclusions
Having tools that can promote exchange of information between

public health and non-public health partners such as emergency man-
agement, law enforcement, and first responders can greatly enhance
the situational awareness and impact overall preparedness and re-
sponse. By having tools embedded in ESSENCE, users are able to
integrate the information sharing aspects into their daily routines with
a small amount of effort. With the use of open source tools, the same
type of capability can be easily replicated in other jurisdictions. This
presentation will describe the lessons learned and potential improve-
ments the project will incorporate in the future.

Keywords
Open Source; Emergency Management; Information Sharing

*Wayne Loschen
E-mail: wayne.loschen@jhuapl.edu

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 5(1):e47, 2013