Electronic Medical Record Support for Public health (ESP)

Funding Information
  • Massachusetts Department of Public Health
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (initiative-specific)
Leadership

Michael Klompas

Year
2005

Project Summary

Electronic Medical Record Support for Public health (ESP) is an open-source EHR-based software platform that provides health departments with daily automated notifiable disease reporting and automated electronic surveillance for acute and chronic conditions using near real-time electronic health record data.

ESP is implemented in Massachusetts in conjunction with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and covers more than 60% of the state population. It is also used in various other regions and as part of the CDC-funded Multi-state EHR-based Network for Disease Surveillance network (MENDS).

Project Details

ESP was originally developed as a partnership between the Department of Population Medicine, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH), and local clinical practice groups. It has since been adopted and adapted for public health surveillance in multiple additional states, and is the technology platform underlying the Multistate EHR-based National Disease Surveillance (MENDS) system.

In Massachusetts, current ESP installations collectively cover more than 60% of the state’s population for reportable infectious disease cases. A subset of practices that cover about 20% of the state population also contribute to chronic disease surveillance via a distributed network called MDPHnet.

How It Works

ESP functions by collating and tabulating automated electronic health record data extracts, organizing these data into common tables, mapping key variables to common terms, analyzing the data for conditions of public health interest, and then transmitting case reports or aggregate summaries to health departments. 

Data visualization tool: RiskScape

RiskScape allows users to generate maps showing disease prevalence rates by zip code, bar graphs describing the epidemiologic characteristics of cases, and time-series analyses showing changes in disease rates over time.

Surveillance platform: RAVIOLI

RAVIOLI is a sophisticated interactive platform for respiratory viral infection surveillance that integrates both laboratory testing and diagnosis codes to track the incidence of respiratory viral infections across the Commonwealth.

Vaccine-safety module: ESP-VAERS

ESP-VAERS is a vaccine-safety module to monitor the safety of COVID and Mpox vaccines. ESP-VAERS is the product of a long-standing CDC-funded initiative to leverage ESP for vaccine safety surveillance and reporting to the CDC/FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

Future Developments

The ESP team is in the process of expanding and adding new sites across Massachusetts, both for infectious disease and other chronic condition surveillance. The team also continues to create and refine EHR-based strategies to better capture and utilize data to support public health in-state and beyond. Additional information, including screenshots, system documentation, and publications, can be found at the ESP website.

Learn more about ESP

Publications

ESP's publications cover areas such as public health surveillance, infectious diseases, and chronic diseases.

Explore their findings