Data Factories for Real-time Public Health Bio-Surveillance

Data Factories for Real-time Public Health Bio-Surveillance

Data Factories for Real-Time Public Health Bio-Surveillance

In this Data Factories project, you explore how to build and use a new kind of tool called a data factory. This factory helps you track public health in real time by using a system called Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, or FHIR.

FHIR, created by a group called HL7, lets you share health data electronically in a modern, web-based way. As a result, this system is changing how doctors and public health teams use data.

Purpose of the Data Factories project

Your main goal is to use FHIR to monitor health trends as they happen. Specifically, you focus on illnesses that affect the lungs and breathing.

To do this, you build a data factory that works with electronic health records, or EHRs. This factory lets you collect, clean, and study both clinical and lab data quickly.

In this project, you track three key things:

  • When patients visit the hospital with signs of respiratory illness.
  • When patients are diagnosed with flu or other viruses
  • When labs test for the flu or similar viruses.

You use real hospital data from MedStar Health, which runs 10 hospitals in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

Project Framework

To make this work, you follow three main steps:

  • First, you explore the data and figure out what to collect. You also decide which health signs to track.
  • Next, you build and run a pipeline using FHIR. This pipeline helps you pull data from the hospitals in near real time.
  • Finally, you test the system. You check if it works well, gives accurate results, and provides data fast enough to be useful.

Along the way, you use a flowchart to show how everything fits together. This chart helps you see how data moves from records to insights.

Executive Summary

The framework includes the research questions, phases, tasks, and methods.

A flowchart showing the three phases of Data Factories: exploration, execution and evaluation, of real-time monitoring of trends in healthcare utilization and lab testing

FHIR Flowchart

The workflow of using FHIR for public health surveillance.

The workflow of using FHIR for public surveillance

Why This Matters

Because of illnesses like COVID-19 and the flu, it’s more important than ever to track public health fast. Using a data factory powered by FHIR, you can help health leaders react quickly.

In the long run, this project shows how technology can support smarter and faster public health work.