Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
1. Provide guidance for software development and ensure interoper-
ability and extensibility across platforms and devices.
2. Provide a reference document for research-related activities related
to health alerting and notification, including the identification and
examination of various policy and procedural considerations related
to health alerting within the scope of the project.
3. Provide a reference document to support future project expan-
sion to include interjurisdictional/regional health alerting and
cascade alerting.
In the following sections, we describe the steps taken toward an implemen-
tation of Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) for the Real-Time Biosurveillance
Program (RTBP) initiative. The RTBP implementation is an adaptation based
on pioneering work done by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control Public
Health Information Network (CDC-PHIN) and contained in August 2008
in its PHIN Communication and Alerting Guide (hereafter referred to as
“PHIN-PCA Guide”). The aim here is to demonstrate an instantiation of CAP
as derived from the PHIN-PCA Guide, highlighting a number of specific
issues and considerations associated with health alerting for a biosurveil-
lance project in a developing country.
14.3 RTBP Alerting and Notification Subsystems
The RTBP alerting and notification functionality consists of four intercon-
nected subsystems (see Figure 14.1):
•
Message creation and validation
•
Message distribution
•
Message delivery
•
Message acknowledgment
14.3.1 Message Creation and Validation
Message creation can be done manually or be automated through middle-
ware linked to the detection/decision component. A software interface and
associated application(s) to support manual message creation will need to
be implemented for the RTBP. The foundation for such an application is cur-
rently available with the open source Sahana Disaster Management System
Messaging Module (Sahana 2008). At present, the Messaging Module provides
a set of generic menus and inputs based on Common Alerting Protocol v1.1.
