Testing & Discovery

Testing & Discovery, the initial stage in the Measurement and Improvement Initiative, serves to gather preliminary and general information on community alignment with Immunization Information System (IIS) Functional Standards while acknowledging there will always be local law and policy and flexibility within the standard that can add additional requirements and contrasts between IIS. The Aggregate Analysis Reporting Tool (AART) is used to compile and display measures and test results for this initial stage and all future stages of the initiative.

Testing & Discovery has been underway since mid-2015. The initial content areas of testing all focused on improving interoperability. It is important for the IIS community to ensure that standards exist and are widely implemented to reduce connectivity barriers and facilitate timely data exchange, which will further enhance the ability to monitor and improve vaccine coverage. A key aspect of standards implementation is measurement adoption. An interoperability testing process provides measurable metrics to verify and track success.

The Testing & Discovery process was set up with several outcomes in mind:

• Testing allows IIS programs to better understand how their system operates in the context of community-wide standards.
• Testing provides information to the Standards & Interoperability Steering Committee (SISC), a workgroup of subject matter experts, to understand where there may be gaps in the current standards while acknowledging there will always be local law and policy and flexibility within the standard that can add additional requirements and contrasts between IIS.
• Testing helps identify specific test cases and procedures that would be appropriate for the IIS community.

In addition, the Testing & Discovery process has several major benefits for the community:

• IIS programs immediately receive feedback on their systems from an independent, third-party perspective.
• The IIS can give feedback (both positive and negative) about the testing process. This will help AIRA make improvements to the process immediately.
• AIRA can collect information on how systems work to determine areas that need further discussion to establish or refine common standards.

In order to participate in or to request more information about the Testing & Discovery process, please contact Kristi Siahaya.

Additional Resources

• Interoperability Testing Project Webinar and Q&A Session
• NIST 2015 Edition Meaningful Use Test Tools
• IIS Measurement and Improvement: Testing and Discovery, Assessment and Validation Overview