Measurement & Improvement Initiative

The IIS Measurement and Improvement Initiative provides IIS with information and guidance to align with the IIS Functional Standards. The IIS Functional Standards are a set of specifications which describe the operations, data quality, and technology needed by IIS to support immunization programs, vaccination providers, and other immunization stakeholders.

The Initiative has created a three-stage process for IIS to measure their alignment with current standards:

Testing and Discovery gathers preliminary information on community alignment with standards.
IIS Assessment involves more formal testing to measure individual IIS systems using IIS community-selected measures and tests.
Validation is a summary stage to acknowledge and share results for IIS that are progressing toward or achieving alignment with community-selected measures and tests.

As part of the Testing and Discovery process, AIRA has developed an automated system that analyzes real-time test connections with pre-production systems. This tool is called the Aggregate Analysis Reporting Tool (AART), and it can be accessed by any participating IIS in order to see their progress toward or achievement of alignment with community-selected measures and tests. AIRA is continuing to connect and test with a growing number of IIS programs and vendors, with more than three quarters of the IIS community’s pre-production systems currently connected. The data available are helping to guide individual IIS enhancements to align with standards.

Each phase (i.e., content area for measuring IIS functionality and capability) progresses through all three stages of Testing and Discovery, IIS Assessment, and Validation. The stages and phases were developed by the Measurement for Assessment and Certification Advisory Workgroup (MACAW), a panel of IIS subject matter experts.

Stages and phases combine to provide a high-level roadmap for the Measurement and Improvement Initiative: