Monthly Update

February 2022 in Review

 

Executive Director's Update

Greetings,

The year is off to a busy start. In late January, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions released a discussion draft of the Pandemic and Public Health Preparedness and Response Bill. This bipartisan legislation is focused on strengthening the nation’s public health and medical preparedness and response systems in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it doesn’t address immunizations or IIS. In early February, AIRA had the opportunity to comment and make recommendations, including calling out immunization data and the IIS role as essential. You can read AIRA’s full comments and recommendations online. The committee continues to work on additional provisions to include in the final bill, which will be marked up in committee.

The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) released the United States Core Data for Interoperability Draft Version 3 (USCDI v3) in mid-January. The USCDI is a standardized set of health data classes and constituent data elements for nationwide, interoperable health information exchange. The draft now includes new data classes that would advance health equity and public health data interoperability. ONC is seeking comments on the data classes and elements that should be included in the final USCDI v3. The public comment period is open now until April 30, 2022. Your jurisdiction can submit comments on the HealthIT.gov website.

The 2022 Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA) Reference Edition was published in mid-January. This is the catalog of curated standards and implementation specifications for health information interoperability from ONC and provides guidance to the health IT community. AIRA’s Standards and Interoperability Steering Committee is collecting comments on the ISA and will submit them collectively, but we still encourage jurisdictions to submit comments. The public comment period has been extended to May 2, 2022. Your jurisdiction can submit comments on the HealthIT.gov website.

There has been increased interest at the national level in Medicaid data sharing. The Association of Immunization Managers is launching a project to promote good examples of Medicaid-IIS data sharing and will be polling the community to learn about the intricacies of data sharing. Staff from U.S. Senator Bob Casey’s (D-Pennsylvania) office interviewed me and Mary Beth Kurilo to learn more about data sharing across state agencies. Several states are working on 75/25 Medicaid Match efforts to support the sustainability of their budgets. Additional efforts are also underway at the federal level to better understand the current state of data sharing between Medicaid and IIS as well as identifying potential opportunities to encourage the ongoing sharing of data.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Biologics Effectiveness and Safety (BEST) Initiative is working with health payors to request and analyze IIS data to better address patient safety issues related to vaccines. The FDA is currently receiving data from 9 states and will be requesting data from an additional 17 or more states. The hope is for all IIS to participate. Jurisdictions may be contacted by organizations contracting with and acting on behalf of the FDA. These contractors may not be as familiar to IIS, and you may wonder if their requests are legitimate. To assist jurisdictions, AIRA is putting together a list of these contractors for your reference as well as some information about the BEST Initiative. We’ll share this information with the IIS community in an email as soon as it’s available.

I have a feeling these busy first few months of 2022 are a predictor of an even busier year. We’ll continue to update you on AIRA’s work and what’s happening in the IIS community.

Rebecca Coyle, MSEd
Executive Director

 

#AIRA2022 National Meeting: Things to Know

#AIRA2022 is well on its way, and here are a few things we think you should know:

  • Registration is now open! Visit the National Meeting website to register and for rates and deadlines.
  • We’re offering a snack box to all the early birds who register by Friday, April 1 (that’s no joke!). Register today to build your own stash of yummy snacks to enjoy during the National Meeting.
  • We’re helping connect you with your fellow National Meeting attendees. As you register, you'll notice the option to share your LinkedIn profile so you can network and post about the National Meeting.
  • We were amazed at the number of abstract submissions this year! We cannot wait to showcase the great work you’re doing! Speaker notifications will be sent out on Friday, March 18.

We can’t wait to see you virtually on April 26 and 27!

 

AIRA Networking Event at HIMSS22

The HIMSS22 Global Health Conference & Exhibition is March 14–18, 2022, in Orlando, Florida, and digitally on March 14–17. AIRA is hosting an in-person networking event at HIMSS22 on Tuesday, March 15 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET at the Hyatt Regency – Bayhill 21.

AIRA is also participating in many other immunization-related events at HIMSS22. Check out our website for details and registration information. We hope to see you in Orlando!

 

Power BI User Group Launched

The first Power BI User Group convened on February 22, with more than 38 members from 18 jurisdictions and partners in attendance. Abhinav Nalla presented Michigan’s Flu Vaccination Dashboard, and the group had a great discussion about mapping and dashboard planning.

Thank you to our co-chairs, Abhinav Nalla from Michigan and Olenka Aguilar from North Dakota. They will be curating topics for future user group meetings and ensuring this group remains engaging, impactful, and useful.

The Power BI User Group will meet every even month, with the next session on Tuesday, April 19, 2022, from noon to 1 p.m. ET. If you are new to Power BI or a current user who wants to expand their skillset, it is not too late to join the Power BI User Group! Please email Amber Buckland.

An Introduction to Power BI training is coming this spring or summer! Email Jody Dial if you’re interested. Act soon, as spaces are already filling up!

 

Coming Soon: AIRA's IIS Epi Shared Services

AIRA is excited to share a new initiative coming in 2022: IIS Epi Shared Services! This new initiative will support the onboarding, training, and advancement of data analysis skills among IIS data analysts and epidemiologists. It will also serve as a network of peers to provide support to and consult with one another. The format will include web-based meetings, peer-to-peer sharing, webinars from subject matter experts, small workgroups dedicated to creating community resources, and office hours with AIRA’s epidemiologist, Taylor Boomsma.

For this collaboration, an IIS data analyst is defined as any individual who extracts, analyzes, interprets, visualizes, or reports out IIS data. All IIS data analysts are invited to attend!

Please mark your calendars to join us at the next AIRA Discovery Session on March 28 at 4 p.m. ET to learn more about this initiative.

To be placed on a mailing list for future IIS Epi Shared Services announcements, contact Amber Buckland.

 

Measurement and Improvement Updates

Logging into the new AART user interface
AIRA and members of the Measurement for Assessment and Certification Advisory Workgroup (MACAW) are excited to announce the rollout of a new user interface (UI) for the Aggregate Analysis Reporting Tool (AART). You’ll now have a new experience as you log in and navigate AART. AART’s existing URL will remain the same. You can log in with your existing username and password as shown in the image below. If you need to register or have recently forgotten your log-in credentials, you can create an account or update your password as well.

Once logged in, a drop-down will display for those users with access to multiple systems. Click the arrow, as seen in the image below, to display a list of available systems the user can select if applicable.

Measurement and sharing in the new UI
Click on Settings in the left-hand blue navigation pane of the UI to find measurement and sharing settings as shown in the image below. Admin users are encouraged to confirm their measurement and sharing settings and review all authorized and pending users regularly. Sharing settings will display once the checkbox is selected to indicate that the system be included in measurement for a specific Measurement and Improvement (M&I) stage (e.g., Testing and Discovery, Assessment, Validation) and content area (Transport, Submission and Acknowledgement, etc.).

My Peers in the new UI
My Peers has a new landing page that allows for an expanded search and filter capability. Users can view testing results by M&I stage (e.g., Validation or Assessment) and content area (e.g., Transport, Submission and Acknowledgement, etc.) depending on the measurement and sharing settings determined by the System Administrator. As shown in the image below, select My Peers from the left-hand menu. Users can choose between the Validation and Assessment tabs and can also select specific content areas that will return a list of results including both named and unnamed systems.

Have questions, want to participate, or need help? AIRA’s technical assistance team is ready to help you understand your AART dashboard and results, prioritize work, and support your movement toward better alignment with standards. Don’t hesitate to contact us for technical assistance. We can quickly answer a question or dive deeper into topics, such as assisting you and your IIS technical development team with better understanding of issues and making plans to more fully align with standards. Fill out a Technical Assistance Request or email AIRA’s AART Development Team at [email protected].

 

How Is Smarty Helping with Your Data Quality?

The Smarty User Group (formerly known as the SmartyStreets User Group) is a quarterly forum that unites members from across the IIS community who implement and use the Smarty address cleansing and geocoding service. It is also an opportunity for IIS interested in adopting Smarty as a data quality intervention to learn more about the service. User group members would love to hear about how your IIS operations benefit from using Smarty, including:

  • How is your IIS using Smarty to complete a project?
  • How is Smarty helping with your patient deduplication?
  • What data visualizations are you generating using Smarty data?

All stories are welcome! If you want to present during one of the 2022 user group meetings, please email Tesha Lucas.

New to Smarty? Want to learn more about what is offered? Need to understand how to use the service? We’re here to help! For information about Smarty, please visit the Address Cleansing Service web page.

 

Information Requests

AIRA members can submit and review information requests—a circulation of questions to and answers from the community. Recent information requests on the topics below can be found by using the “Information Requests” filter in the AIRA repository.

  • Electronic Signature of Parents/Patients
  • Missing Patient-Reported Doses
  • IIS Read-Only Access

Information requests are viewable only by individual members and individuals affiliated with member and partner organizations. Just log in to view these valuable resources! If you have any questions, please email [email protected].

 

Committee and Workgroup Updates: February Recap

HL7 Immunization User Group

  • The HL7 Immunization User Group met on February 10.
  • The user group received updates from the Standards and Interoperability Steering Committee and HL7 Innovations Workgroup.
  • The user group held a community panel that discussed quality of race and ethnicity data.
  • The user group received a presentation on the National Institute of Standards and Technology HL7 V2 General Validation Tool.
  • The next user group meeting is March 10, 2022, from 2 to 3 p.m. ET.

Measurement for Assessment and Certification Advisory Workgroup (MACAW)

  • MACAW met on February 10.
  • The workgroup welcomed new members Emily Martinez from New York City and Kathryn Cruz from New Mexico.
  • The workgroup received an update on assessment reports and validation and a demo of the Aggregate Analysis Reporting Tool.
  • The next MACAW meeting is March 10, 2022, from noon to 1 p.m. ET.

Modeling of Immunization Registry Operations Workgroup (MIROW)

SmartyStreets User Group

  • The user group met on February 16.
  • The user group received an update on the re-branding of SmartyStreets to Smarty.
  • The user group received a demo from Megan Drysdale and Kevin Snow of Envision and followed up with an open discussion of the Envision demo.
  • The next user group meeting is May 18, 2022, from 2 to 3 p.m. ET.

Standards and Interoperability Steering Committee (SISC)

  • SISC met on February 9.
  • Paloma Hawry, speaking on behalf of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gave an update on code sets.
  • The committee received an update on the HL7 Immunization User Group and SISC small groups from Nathan Bunker.
  • The committee received an update on the process, timeline, and gathering of community comments for both Interoperability Standards Advisory and United States Core Data for Interoperability V3.
  • Craig Newman from Altarum gave an overview of Helios and requests for input on existing and new use cases.
  • The next committee meeting is March 9, 2022, from 1 to 2 p.m. ET.

NOTE: Meeting minutes will capture only action items and decisions made. Recordings of the meetings can be obtained directly upon request by emailing [email protected].

 

AIRA Job Opportunities

Are you interested in working for AIRA or in the IIS community? Find current job openings at AIRA and other states/jurisdictions on the Employment Opportunities and Requests for Proposals page on the AIRA website.

  • AIRA is hiring two Informatics Project Coordinators for the Health Informatics Division. One position will serve on the Immunization (IZ) Gateway/Onboarding Shared Services (OSS) Team, and a second will work on the Immunization Integration Program (IIP) Team. The people in these positions will assist in the execution of goals and strategies, as well as operationalize components of the IZ Gateway/OSS program and the IIP and support the coordination, implementation, and tracking of programmatic goals by documenting project activities and progress, coordinating virtual meetings, and providing administrative support. Please share this information with anyone who is interested and qualified. Send completed application packages, including an AIRA Job Application, to [email protected].

Opportunities for independent contractors

Sign up to get notifications of future contracting opportunities.

  • There are no opportunities at this time.
 

AIRA in the News – February 2022

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