Charting the Way with TRAX for Chronic Disease Surveillance

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Informatics
• Data Management

Background:

• Chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension pose significant public health challenges.
• Effective surveillance systems are crucial for managing and mitigating chronic disease impact.
• Existing data sharing mechanisms often lack flexibility and robust governance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a plan for enhancing public health chronic disease surveillance in Washington state.
• To design a cooperatively governed, technologically flexible, and secure data sharing platform.
• To establish a model for reproducible, cross-jurisdictional chronic disease surveillance.

Main Methods:

• A joint planning committee involving the Washington Healthcare Forum Board and Department of Health (DOH) was formed.
• The Transformational Repository & Analytics eXchange (TRAX) platform concept was developed.
• Priority conditions (diabetes, hypertension) were identified for initial projects using anonymous patient-level longitudinal data.

Main Results:

• A plan for the TRAX platform was created, emphasizing cooperative governance and health information exchange (HIE).
• Leveraging existing HIE advances and national infrastructure (TEFCA) reduced development time and administrative burden.
• TRAX is designed as an adaptable and reproducible solution for data sharing.

Conclusions:

• TRAX offers a secure and flexible platform for chronic disease surveillance.
• The integration of governance and HIE is key to effective public health data sharing.
• TRAX serves as a potential national model for improving chronic disease surveillance systems.