title: MDPHnet: secure, distributed sharing of electronic health record data for public health surveillance, evaluation, and planning.
abstract: Electronic health record systems contain clinically detailed data from large populations of patients that could significantly enrich public health surveillance. Clinical practices' security, privacy, and proprietary concerns, however, have limited their willingness to share these data with public health agencies. We describe a novel distributed network for public health surveillance called MDPHnet. The system allows the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) to initiate custom queries against participating practices' electronic health records while the data remain behind each practice's firewall. Practices can review proposed queries before execution and approve query results before releasing them to the health department. MDPH is using the system for routine surveillance for priority conditions and to evaluate the impact of public health interventions.
authors.affiliation: Joshua Vogel and Thomas Land are with the Office of Health Information Policy and Informatics, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Boston. Jeffrey S. Brown, Richard Platt, and Michael Klompas are with the Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Boston, MA.
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Vogel
authors.forename: Jeffrey S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Land
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Platt
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Klompas
mesh_terms: D016494:Computer Security; D003199:Computer Systems; D057286:Electronic Health Records; D006285:Health Planning; D006801:Humans; D008404:Massachusetts; D040442:Public Health Informatics; D062486:Public Health Surveillance / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software