Meaningful Use Workgroup Selected

The Syndromic Surveillance for Meaningful Use: Inpatient and Ambulatory Clinical Care EHR Data project is well underway. The Call for Meaningful Use Workgroup Nominations has ended and the workgroup has officially been chosen. ISDS received many qualified candidates for the workgroup positions during the call for nominations. It was difficult to select a few members from such an outstanding pool of nominees. Member expertise span multiple areas within public health, clinical care, and medical informatics. Many workgroup members hold prominent positions within the stakeholder community and currently work or have previously worked on national policy initiatives. These various perspectives in addition to stakeholder input will help ensure that a balanced and informed recommendation will be reached. To learn more about the various workgroup members, visit the Meaningful Use Workgroup page and view the workgroup bios (pdf).  

This 10-person workgroup is tasked with guiding the development of ISDS recommendations to support public health authorities in using Meaningful Use certified hospital inpatient and ambulatory EHR data for timely and effective public health prevention and response. These recommendations will build upon the ISDS Final Recommendation: Core Processes and EHR Requirements for Public Health Syndromic Surveillance, published on January 31, 2011.  You may view this recommendation here (pdf). You may also learn more about the current recommendation process by watching Charlie Ishikawa's November 8, 2011 introduction webinar here.  

More information on the first Meaningful Use Workgroup meetings and accomplishments will be coming soon. Until then, visit the project homepage for more information. 

If you have any questions, contact Charlie Ishikawa at meaningfuluse@syndromic.org or (617) 779-0886. 

Published Joint Statistical Meetings Proceedings Papers

View two recently published 2011 JSM Proceedings papers about the Distribute project. 

Analytic Evaluation of a Standardization Effort for the DISTRIBUTE Emergency Department Surveillance Project

• Howard Burkom, Donald Olson, Atar Baer, Marc Paladini, Debra Revere, Anne McIntyre

Generation of Prediction Intervals to Assess Data Quality in the Distribute System Using Quantile Regression

• Ian Painter, Julie Eaton, Don Olson, Debra Revere, Bill Lober

BioSense 2.0: Challenge Grant Opportunity

On behalf of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), RTI has released an announcement detailing the BioSense Challenge Grant Opportunity. 

The BioSense Program plans to award 10 grants ranging in value from $5,000 to $25,000 through RTI International. RTI has a contract with CDC (contract number GS10F0097L) to facilitate the redesign of the BioSense application and will administer the Challenge Grant award process.

You may find more information about this opportunity by viewing the BioSense 2.0: Challenge Grant Opportunity and Call for Letters of Intent PDF document. 

Estimated Key Dates

·         Challenge Grant Opportunity Announcement and Call for Letters of Intent posted: December 14, 2011

·         Period for submitting Letters of Intent: December 14, 2011 - January 13, 2012

·         Letter of Intent review period: January 13, 2012 - February 3, 2012

·         Period for full Grant Applications closes: March 2, 2012

·         Grant award decisions: March 30, 2012

·         Grant project period ends: no later than March 30, 2013.

More Information

More information about the BioSense Program and BioSense 2.0 is available at: www.biosenseredesign.org or submit questions to info@biosen.se

Congratulations to the newly elected ISDS Board of Directors!

The polls have closed and the election results are in! On behalf of the ISDS staff, we extend warm congratulations to the newly elected and re-elected Board members:

Atar Baer

Aaron Kite-Powell

Joe Lombardo

Marc Paladini

We are looking forward to the further contributions of these four Board members to ISDS. Visit the Board page on the ISDS website for the full listing of ISDS Board of Directors and their bios. 

Thank you to everyone who participated in this election!

If you are an ISDS member and would like to receive a copy of the monthly Board meeting minutes, please contact Amanda Schulte at aschulte@syndromic.org.