Kansas HIE first to join CDC surveillance system

Kansas is the first state in the U.S. to connect to the national disease outbreak surveillance system via a digital health information exchange.

Although various individuals hospitals across the U.S. already are linked to the system, officials at BioSense, the syndromic surveillance system at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said that the Kansas Health Information Network (KHIN) is the first HIE to begin contributing data.

The CDC system tracks 89 syndrome categories as mandated by the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness Response Act of 2002.

Before KHIN joined the system, BioSense had just one Kansas hospital contributing data. KHIN adds 10 more Kansas hospitals' surveillance data to BioSense, dramatically expanding its surveillance efforts.

Among the 89 reporting categories are a wide variety of symptoms that, when aggregated across larger geographic areas, can reveal any number of possible outbreaks tied to a common diagnosis, including asthma, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, hemorrhages, rashes and even spates of vehicle crashes.