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ISDS 2016 Conference Abstracts

Integrating Poison Center Data into Oregon ESSENCE 
using a Low-Cost Solution
Robert Laing* and Melissa Powell
Public Health Division, Oregon Health Authority, Portland, OR, USA

Objective
To enhance Oregon ESSENCE’s surveillance capabilities by 

incorporating data from the Oregon Poison Center using limited 
resources.

Introduction
Oregon Public Health Division (OPHD), in collaboration with the 

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, implemented 
Oregon ESSENCE in 2012. Oregon ESSENCE is an automated, 
electronic syndromic surveillance system that captures emergency 
department data. To strengthen the capabilities of Oregon ESSENCE, 
OPHD sought other sources of health-outcome information, including 
Oregon Poison Center (OPC). In the past, Oregon’s surveillance staff 
manually monitored OPC data on the National Poison Data Service 
(NPDS) website. Although functional, it was not integrated into 
Oregon’s syndromic surveillance system and required epidemiologists 
to assess alerts on individual calls. To achieve data integration, 
OPHD pursued an automated solution to deliver OPC data into 
Oregon ESSENCE. OPHD’s growing interoperability infrastructure 
fostered development of a low-cost, reliable solution to automate the 
integration of these data sources.

Methods
OPC facilitated OPHD’s access to the free-of-charge NPDS web 

service with an approval request and a data use agreement. OPHD 
uses the Rhapsody Integration Engine 6.2.1 (Orion Health, Auckland, 
NZ) as its primary data transfer and translation mechanism. OPHD 
leveraged its existing Rhapsody installation to automatically request 
data from the NPDS web service daily. Each request contains custom 
search parameters that query calls from the previous day (24 hours). 
The service returns an XML file containing poison center call data 
with multiple nodes of related data. Rhapsody uses a JavaScript ‘filter’ 
to parse each call and its related data. The Oregon ESSENCE backend 
SQL database contains a parent table for the call and child tables for 
the related data (Clinical Effects, Routes, Scenarios, Therapies, and 
Generic Codes). Rhapsody inserts data into each of these backend 
SQL tables.

Results
Oregon ESSENCE displays OPC data through its web interface for 

interpretation by OPHD’s syndromic surveillance epidemiologists. 
Integrating NPDS data into Oregon ESSENCE allows OPHD staff 
to timely monitor data in an automated, routine manner. Syndromic 
surveillance staff first assess alerts generated by Oregon ESSENCE. 
Alerts that require follow-up trigger a call between OPHD 
epidemiologists and OPC. Oregon is the first state to use the NPDS 
web service to upload poison center data into Oregon ESSENCE.

Conclusions
Oregon’s successful integration of the NPDS web service data into 

Oregon ESSENCE is the first known of its kind. It leverages OPHD’s 
growing infrastructure of interoperability software applications and 
staff expertise to create a cost-effective and sustainable solution that 
can be easily adapted by other public health agencies.

Keywords
Interoperability; ESSENCE; Poison Data; Oregon; NPDS

Acknowledgments
Thank you to Kyle Ryff, MPH; Melissa Powell, MPH; Michelle Barber, 
MS; and Laurel Boyd, MPH, all of whom spent significant time in the 
development of OPHD’s Rhapsody engine and informatics infrastructure. 
This publication was supported by Cooperative Agreements, number 
1U50OE000068-01, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and 
do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention or the Department of Health and Human Services.

*Robert Laing
E-mail: robert.s.laing@state.or.us

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 9(1):e42, 2017