CDC Plans to Roll Out App in May to Speed Up COVID-19 Case Reporting

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plans to roll out an app in May that will accelerate electronic case reporting of COVID-19 cases.

The app, based on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards, can be implemented quickly to automate COVID case reporting, said Laura Conn, health scientist and eCR lead in the CDC's Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services.

The app enables healthcare providers that don't have the capability to automatically send case reports from their health IT systems to more efficiently send data to public health agencies.

"The FHIR app can be rapidly implemented to automate COVID-19 electronic case reporting (eCR) in otherwise non-enabled EHRs. The app will connect COVID-19 eCR to existing infrastructure to confirm cases and route to appropriate public health surveillance systems. We are making sure that can be easily used without requiring a software release by the vendors," said Conn during a meeting this week of a Congressional health IT advisory committee (HITAC).