Big Changes in EpiCenter 3.0

As we’ve mentioned previously, the Health Monitoring Systems team has been hard at work on incorporating extensible data types into EpiCenter. These extensible data types include Triage Notes and Observations. Now that EpiCenter 3.0 has been released, we’re excited to share these new enhancements with our users.

If you read EpiCentral, you might be aware of the tools that Health Monitoring Systems has implemented in EpiCenter to assist our users with Ebola surveillance. In addition to creating an Immediate Notification classification for Ebola, users have been able to use functionality like Custom Classifiers and the Classifier Query Editor to create their own analysis tools for Ebola. However, HMS’s work over the past year to enhance existing data feeds meant that there was a significant amount of additional data that could be leveraged for more effective Ebola surveillance.

This prompted the release of a report that allows users to conduct free-text searches of all triage notes in their region. We found that the triage notes often contained information about a patient’s travel history, detailed information regarding their symptoms, and sometimes information about their course of treatment in the emergency department. We believe (and research has indicated) that this functionality will ultimately be essential to conducting more effective and specific disease surveillance.

With EpiCenter 3.0, Health Monitoring Systems has enhanced its reporting and data processing tools to offer users the ability to view and analyze any number of observations from a sender’s HL7 messages. Observations commonly include vital signs (such as temperature, blood pressure, and height and weight), but can also include medication administration, test results, Body Mass Index (BMI) and even procedure codes.

If triage data isn’t yet available in your region, contact us to learn how we can assist in the process of acquiring this data from connected facilities.