Release of the Digital Bridge Public Health API Concept Paper – Version 1.0
Digital Bridge’s Public Health API Concept Paper – Published Version
The Digital Bridge is pleased to announce the release of its “Public Health API Concept Paper – Version 1.0”. The paper is available on our website.
Over the past five years, there has been a major transformation in the way health care organizations exchange health information with each other and with their customers. In addition to the rapid adoption of electronic health records and health IT standards, this transformation has been accelerated by the widespread adoption and use of Application Programming Interfaces, commonly known as APIs, third-party apps, mobile devices, and new technical standards, such as HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR).
One area where APIs are beginning to have an impact and show promising opportunities is public health. Many interactions between health care providers, health plans, and community-based organizations with public health are still extensively performed today through manual processes, paper forms, and asynchronous electronic information exchanges using a variety of technical standards and proprietary or heavily customized solutions. Electronic case reporting, lab reporting, contact tracing, and immunization registries, in the time of COVID-19, are perfect examples of different approaches currently in use for data reporting. As we move to more interactive, real-time, public health reporting, API technologies become more useful.
To address COVID-19 related case reporting, CDC developed “eCR Now,” that includes a FHIR-based reporting app that takes advantage of these new and innovative technologies to obtain faster, more reliable COVID-19 case reports that include more detailed clinical data. One key intent of the development of a common generic API Infrastructure for public health is to enable public health agencies to have direct, secure, and interactive access to up-to-date clinical information about specific patient-cases, as well as population data and metrics.
This Digital Bridge public health API concept paper is intended to serve as a reference and provide valuable information and tools for public health professionals as they look to develop and implement their agency’s or organization’s public health API strategy. The paper includes an introductory overview of APIs in general and as they apply to public health, a summary of recent health policy developments related to API, basic technical API concepts and building blocks, public health use cases, policy and privacy issues, steps needed to implement a public health API strategy, and a listing of tools and resources available to support implementation of an API strategy. The paper is intended primarily for public health professionals in local, state, and federal agencies, industry groups, and professional associations. The paper also targets groups implementing or developing a set of common, generic API Infrastructure capabilities so they can understand and support any capabilities or variations on capabilities needed to support public health. It is not intended to serve as a roadmap for implementation of an API platform or program. Rather, to be a resource to better understand the basic API concepts and opportunities for public health.