The Digital Bridge initiative is a collaboration of most of the largest health care providers, electronic health record (EHR) vendors, and public health practice associations in the United States. Within the next year, it is likely to define the essential operations of electronic case reporting from healthcare providers to public health. A standard, robust reporting process will decrease the burden on reporters, and provide public health agencies with more complete and timely information about diseases that threaten the public’s health. The process established by the Digital Bridge initiative may form the basis for getting other data to public health from EHRs, such as data about chronic disease.

Places interested in helping to establish and shape the process can now apply to be Implementation Sites. In order to assure that the process created by this initiative is robust within the system variations that occur in the U.S. public health system, the initiative would like to have participation by a variety of sites. Each site will need to include an organization that sends initial electronic case reports (iECR) to the AIMS platform (a secure, central distribution system) based on criteria from the RCKMS system, and a public health agency that electronically receives those reports from the AIMS platform.

Please visit www.digitalbridge.us/implementationsites to access more information and the online application. The deadline to apply is January 13, 2017, and sites will need to provide their own funding and resources.

The Digital Bridge project management office will hold a site application question and answer session on December 16, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. ET. Interested parties should register here.

Please consider participating in this important effort for U.S. public health.