Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
jurisdictions and with other jurisdictions, especially during emergencies”
(p. 9). From a health policy standpoint, a standards-based approach also has
the potential to promote regional data sharing by ensuring a minimum degree
of technical interoperability between platforms, thereby reducing transac-
tion costs associated with system interconnection and data interchange.
Moreover, with a growing diversity of end-user devices being deployed
at the community-level (e.g., mobile phones and other wireless devices),
it is important that alerting and notification programs be guided by an
approach based on the principle of extensibility in general (Botterell and
Addams-Moring 2007). This principle essentially describes a design meth-
odology that facilitates the integration of new devices and additional func-
tionality into the system over time. This could include the ability to support
a range of new end-user devices not anticipated at the initial stages of the
project, the ability to introduce advanced distribution methods (e.g., preci-
sion geo-targeting and routing of messages), or the ability to support cross-
jurisdictional and cascade alerting and notification as future enhancements
to the system.
Within the context of a real-time biosurveillance system, it is especially
important that the myriad components are capable of working together in
a relatively seamless operation that extends from detection to alerting and
notification. Information technology standards play a role at various archi-
tectural layers to support this objective, ensuring, for example, end-to-end
interoperability of both hardware and software elements. In conjunction
with software layer, it is important to consider the need for a standard to
support data interchange between software applications. More specifically,
a paramount consideration when issuing health alerts within the RTBP ini-
tiative has been to ensure that the system is extensible to the extent that it
can support data interchange across a variety of end-user devices with quite
different levels of capabilities, ranging from a standard HTML Web browser
to the more constrained features of a JAVA-based application on a wireless
device or Short Message Service (SMS) on a mobile phone.
A standardized alert format based on Common Alerting Protocol
(CAP) v1.1, combined with Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL)
Distribution Element, provides the basis for an extensible notification sys-
tem well-suited to this objective (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention [CDC] 2008). The CAP/EDXL combination can support auto-
mated creation and distribution of alert messages to a wide range of end-
user (last-mile) systems and devices, including mobile phones. Moreover,
a standardized format using these protocols supports other activities
related to biosurveillance projects, including data archiving and analysis
of results for multi-agency situation awareness (MA-SA) activities as well
as research (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
Standards [OASIS] 2005).
In sum, there are three primary objectives served by providing a standard-
ized format for issuing health alerts within the RTBP initiative:
