CDC PRIME REPORTSTREAM UI + API DEVELOPMENT
CHallenge
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) established mandatory reporting of COVID-19 test results to better monitor the growing threat to public health.
The sudden increase in disease reporting overwhelmed public health departments. Many facilities, such as hospitals, clinics, and laboratories, did not have prior experience with public health reporting and submitted data through legacy technologies such as faxing, emailing, and even traditional “snail mail.” Additional efforts were mobilized - including using the National Guard - to reduce the bottleneck created by the data entry process.
In 2020, the CDC partnered with the U.S. Digital Services (USDS) to start the Pandemic-Readiness Interoperability Modernization Effort (PRIME) initiative to build “pandemic-ready IT systems” that would improve data accuracy and efficiency between local, public, state, and federal health departments. The PRIME initiative focused on developing two reporting tools: SimpleReport and ReportStream.
SimpleReport is a free web application that helps testing providers, especially those without prior experience of public health reporting, submit structured, high-quality COVID-19 data.
ReportStream is an open-source integration engine that supports public health departments in receiving, processing, and sharing COVID-19 data across state jurisdictions. Health facilities can submit data through services like SimpleReport, and ReportStream transforms the data into a single efficient, usable form.
Contributions
Support for the ReportStream code base included:
01 Writing Azure functions as API endpoints to extract, transform, and load disease reporting data.
02 Developing of an authentication strategy that supported quick, accurate, and effective data submission from entities with multiple other methods of authentication.
03 Creating a generic transform layer which allowed ReportStream to reduce overhead and speed up the onboarding process of reporting entities.
04 Overhauling the front-end architecture and build system. Our use of React instead of Eleventy, a static site generator, allowed us solve complex user-interface problems such as asynchronous data-fetching and secure authentication.
05 Creating a simple user-interface that would allow faster data uploads. Rather than single-item entry, the interface allowed upload via .CSV file which uploads several rows of results at a time
06 Creating a user interface to enable integration engineers to better-serve disease reporting entities, allowing them to update transform layer schemas to reduce the turn-around time of getting data to their respective public health department
07 Identifying improvements for DevOps process and security such as best practices surrounding replica database usage.
Result
This project was a collaborative effort across several diverse crews who focused on establishing key goals, analyzing tasks, and ensured that intiatives were made in a timely manner.
Contributions from HAYANOVA’s principle engineers reduced the barrier to entry for new disease-reporting entities such as schools, churches, gyms, and multinational health care companies, such as Abbott Laboratories.
Our work on ReportStream ensured that millions of test reporting records were delivered to the correct destinations faster and with verifiable accuracy, which enabled the CDC to relay public information regarding pandemic statistics.
Technologies
Azure/Azure Functions
Java/Kotlin
Javascript/Typescript
React
Cypress
DevOps
Docker/Docker-Compose
Containerization
AWS
Postgresql
GitHub Actions
Cloud Hosting/Infrastructure
