AIMS: Delivering Critical Health Data at the Speed of Outbreaks 

When it comes to detecting disease and monitoring outbreaks, nothing is more critical than time.

The quick gathering and dissemination of information—about what diseases are emerging, their dominant strains, whether there are clusters in communities—are all crucial to an effective public health response.

But to travel fast and securely, that information needs a reliable transportation system. That’s where APHL Informatics Messaging Services (AIMS) comes into play.

AIMS is a secure, cloud-based platform that serves as a hub to exchange vital public health data. Launched in 2008 by APHL in partnership with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), AIMS provides the critical infrastructure for public health laboratories, federal partners, hospitals, private sector laboratories and other public health entities to safely and quickly share disease and other health data so outbreaks can be identified and contained as they’re happening. 

Think of AIMS as a high-speed interstate transporting critical information—in the form of health care records, birth and death vital statistics, laboratory test orders and results (including newborn screening tests) and other health data—from one point to another.

In the beginning

Prior to the advent of AIMS, sharing essential health data could be painstakingly slow. Mail or fax were the main ways information was shared between public health laboratories and CDC.

Besides being a time-consuming process that was less-than-ideal in terms of security, using mail or fax often resulted in incomplete or incorrect reports, said Michelle Meigs, managing director, Informatics, APHL. “For example, a very busy laboratory professional might try to save time by using abbreviations in a patient’s name, or a mistake could be made entering the information from the paper into the system. The result would be an incomplete or incorrect report that needed to be fixed, and that would use up more valuable time.”

There needed to be a more efficient information pipeline, especially with all 50 states flooding CDC with data. That’s when CDC approached APHL to create a platform on which data from states, territories and jurisdictions could be securely shared.

“The first senders were public health laboratories and the first disease they tracked on the system was influenza,” Meigs said. “But as trust in our technology and our people has grown, we’ve expanded to include more agencies and laboratories and to collect and exchange data on more diseases. What FedEx is to package delivery, AIMS is to health data—a way to get information where it needs to go in a fast, reliable, secure way.”

Beyond flu: The growing impact of AIMS on public health

As the AIMS platform grew, it became apparent that its use could extend beyond influenza data.

“There’s reusability built into this platform,” said Eddie Gonzalez Loumiet, senior advisor, Informatics Strategy, APHL. “For example, in January 2020 CDC came to us and said, ‘We’re going to need a way to get COVID-19 testing data from the states to CDC.’ We didn’t have to spend millions building a new transport system. We already had it: AIMS.”

The platform is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud-computing service provider that can rapidly scale up as diseases arise. “This innovative technology has allowed public health professionals such as epidemiologists to get the data they need in real-time so a public health response can be launched and lives can be saved,” Gonzalez Loumiet underscored.

AIMS has not only expanded to the type of data it transports, but also the entities to which it transmits. Today, AIMS exchanges electronic laboratory and case reporting from hospitals to jurisdictions; private and public laboratories to jurisdictions; state to state; states to CDC and more.

“This is all organic growth,” Gonzalez Loumiet commented. “Florida might send data to New York because the patient is a snowbird. Or Iowa might send information to Nebraska because the patient lives in Nebraska, but their healthcare provider is in neighboring Iowa. The sharing of information across state public health systems simply wasn’t happening before AIMS. It was a gap in the healthcare ecosystem, a blind spot that is now being filled by the platform.”

To ensure the highest levels of security and compliance, AIMS undergoes rigorous audits and assessments aligned with federal standards such as HIPAA and FISMA. ‘We invest heavily in these security measures,’ Gonzalez Loumiet said. ‘From robust onboarding processes to stringent documentation requirements, we follow strict protocols to safeguard sensitive health data and maintain trust across public health networks.'”

The future of AIMS

It took AIMS eight years to securely transport its one millionth message. Today, the platform handles around half a billion secure health messages per year, and that volume is rapidly increasing. AIMS is in a unique position to serve the public health community—not just as a technology provider, but as the nation’s trusted public health intermediary.

“Other organizations are entering the market with data exchange technology, but none have our deep-rooted public health expertise or the longstanding trust of federal and state agencies,” Gonzalez Loumiet noted. “Over the 17 years, we’ve connected every state, partnered with more than 70 public health organizations and integrated over 45,000 healthcare providers into our platform—truly the backbone of modern public health. We’ve spent years perfecting our security measures, streamlining onboarding processes and scaling our operations at the speed of disease outbreaks.”

Looking ahead, AIMS is poised to serve as the nation’s single public health intermediary—eliminating fragmentation, enhancing efficiency and ensuring seamless, secure data exchange across all levels of public health. Centralizing connectivity can dramatically reduce costs, improve response times and fortify national readiness for future health threats. Its strategy is not just about modernizing infrastructure; it’s about reimagining how public health data is shared, leveraged and protected for generations to come.

“The next era of AIMS isn’t just about keeping pace with change; it’s about leading it,” Gonzalez Loumiet said.