A messaging standard for environmental inspections: is it time?

Abstract

Environmental health (EH) services in the United States lag behind other areas of public health and health care with respect to information system interoperability and data sharing. This is partly due to an absence of well-defined use cases, the lack of direct economic drivers and resources to improve, the multiple jurisdictional elements that govern EH services across the United States, and no central organization to drive modernization of EH data. We summarize the status of EH information systems; argue for greater interoperability, including use cases for a messaging standard for environmental inspections; and present recommendations to better align EH services and data modernization efforts currently underway in other areas of public health.