Public Health Information Network

The Public Health Information Network (PHIN) is a national initiative, developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for advancing fully capable and interoperable information systems in public health organizations. The initiative involves establishing and implementing a framework for public health information systems.

PHIN is designed to do the following:

The 5 Functional Areas of PHIN:

"PHIN will elevate and integrate the capabilities of public health information systems across the wide variety of organizations that participate in public health and across the wide variety of interrelated public health functional needs. PHIN is both a response to the needs for better integration among public health systems and a plan for developing systems and infrastructure to better support public health activities and improve public health outcomes. PHIN targets the support and integration of systems for disease surveillance, national health status indicators, data analysis, public health decision support, information resources and knowledge management, alerting and communications and the management of public health response. PHIN includes a portfolio of software solutions and artifacts necessary in building and maintaining interconnected information systems throughout public health at the local, state and federal levels. PHIN advances the National Health Information Infrastructure and federal E-Gov agendas by working with the Federal Health Architecture (FHA) and implementing the Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) standards for reducing the burden of private sector reporting through the automated use of electronic clinical data for public health purposes as an alternative to manual reporting. It is consistent with other private sector initiatives such as Connecting for Health and e-Health as well as the industry standards for clinical data messaging such as HL7. PHIN also aligns with the federal e-Gov technical architecture standards such as ebXML and public key infrastructure (PKI). See Standards Development Organizations for more information on national standards."

PHIN attempts to provide the public health sector with continuous access to necessary health care information. Access to near real-time data attempts to improve community based interventions that are implemented as a result of terrorism or disease outbreaks.

PHIN provides supports and helps improve the outcomes of various public health programs including the following:

PHIN first received funding in 2004 through the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between 25% and 30% of the $849 million of funding received through the Public Health Response and Preparedness Cooperative Agreement was to be used to focus on improving public health preparedness in all 50 states, 4 metropolitan areas and 8 US territories. In 2004 the initiative of the program was to “ensure that all public health partners have, or at least will have, access to a system or systems to accomplish established preparedness functions.” For year 2005, additional finances will be available to states through the terrorism cooperative agreement. This agreement will support the development of current and new systems, in state health and public health departments, which will meet the PHIN standards and specifications.

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