Infectious Diseases Messaging

APHL’s AIMS Platform serves as the longstanding critical infrastructure for the nation’s influenza and respiratory disease data reporting and message flow. Public health laboratories currently use AIMS to send their states’ influenza, COVID-19 and vaccine preventable disease test results to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for surveillance.  

Learn more about AIMS

Electronic Laboratory Surveillance Messages (ELSM) allow laboratories to efficiently send surveillance data to CDC in an automated manner. ELSM was first developed to send influenza testing results via the Public Health Laboratory Interoperability Project (PHLIP) to CDC as part of the World Health Organization’s Global Influenza Surveillance Network. Later, ELSM was expanded to transmit testing results for vaccine preventable diseases, antimicrobial resistance and animal rabies from reference laboratories to CDC. 

PHLIP was launched in 2006 to improve information sharing between public health laboratories and CDC. This national collaboration was born out of a dire need to ensure all public health entities spoke the same language and communicated standardized information, despite the use of different systems and technologies. PHLIP continues strengthening collaboration within the public health laboratory community and furthers the goal of nationwide electronic laboratory data exchange—a major priority for public health and homeland security. 

PHLIP began as a mechanism for PHLs to securely send influenza data through a standardized messaging format that could be easily received and processed by CDC. It has since grown to include other testing, such as respiratory and enteric virus data that is critical to the National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System (NREVSS), in addition to being designated as a data reporting source for COVID-19 test results.

APHL’s technical assistance team works with CDC to upgrade and implement all public health laboratories to send PHLIP messages in HL7 v2.5.1 format. The HL7 v2.5.1 message incorporates standardized LOINC and SNOMED terminology, epidemiological data elements and ask on order entry (AOE) data elements, NREVSS pathogens, ILINet information, and can be updated to incorporate other pathogens as needed.