Integrating public health information and surveillance systems

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognizes sound public health information is the essential ingredient of all of its work and the key to effective public health decision making. A CDC/ATSDR committee reached a consensus that CDC needed to streamline and consolidate its public health surveillance and information systems into an integrated system. With integrated systems, a wide range of diverse individual information systems will continue to exist but these systems must be coordinated, interconnected, comparable, and easy to use. The "glue" that holds these systems together consists of (1) uniform data standards, (2) communications networks, and (3) policy-level agreements regarding data access, sharing, and reduction of data collection burdens. By putting the appropriate policy-making apparatus and resources in place, CDC believes the end result will be a streamlined process that meets the information needs of CDC and its partners with less confusion and frustration.