During fall 2009, the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) faced the challenge of coordinating vaccine supplies to providers, as well as serving as the focal point for questions and current information related to novel H1N1 influenza. Decision makers in the department responded to this push for information by creating a "situational awareness dashboard," a Web page that served as a comprehensive portal for situational information and was posted to its internal, access-restricted Health Alert Network (HAN).
The dashboard provided executive public health staff with the information they needed to make decisions about the H1N1 vaccination program, said Rebecca Hathaway, Deputy Director of the Office of Health Emergency Preparedness. Before building the dashboard, leaders from information management services and information technology worked with executive-level public health staff to identify their wish list of information. Based on these responses, the dashboard became decision makers' comprehensive source for evolving program status reports, real-time data, and notifications.
The dashboard was a one-stop shop that provided state and local decision makers with the information that was shared with the public and/or providers, as well as information for internal use to inform the response to H1N1 pandemic. The dashboard included documents that would be provided on the Department's public website, such as health and vaccine safety advisories, H1N1 toolkits, guidance documents, legal information for providers, and the status of vaccine ordering and tracking. It included sections for news, advisories, surveillance data, risk communication, information specific to local health departments (LHD), general vaccine information, SNS updates, and mass vaccination planning. The dashboard also included a wide variety of tools for decision makers to use for vaccine management, including documents on topics such as vaccine inventory and expiration, guidance for protection of patient privacy, call center scripts, mass vaccinator contracts, provider H1N1 vaccine pre-registration letters, vaccine recalls, and LHD and provider 2009 H1N1 vaccination toolkits.
The dashboard helped users answer the question, "How best do we allocate vaccine?" The site gathered geographic data, LHD and hospital data, and epidemiological and clinical laboratory information and condensed it in one secure site. It provided a unified view of many data systems used during the vaccination campaign, including state systems like the Communicable Disease Epidemiology and Surveillance System (CDESS), the Electronic Clinical Laboratory Reporting System (ECLRS), and the Healthcare Emergency Response Data System (HERDS). The County Surveillance and Reporting System (CoSur) also was included. Some decisions about the same issue had to be made multiple, even hundreds, of times. Every day, planners had to adjust their decisions based on where vaccine was needed most, changes in disease spread in institutions, target group definitions, and provider preferences for receipt of information.
To meet this need for information, some data on the dashboard had to be updated daily. Time-sensitive data that needed to reach decision-makers quickly included school absenteeism and closure, emergency department surge and overrun, rates of uninsured, and medical surge at health centers. Data was used ultimately to develop an evolving vaccine allocation scheme and track providers and vaccine supply across the state. The dashboard played an integral role in the H1N1 vaccination campaign by providing planners with situational data that was timely, easy to use, and responsive to change, Hathaway said.