Evaluation Framework for Public Health Information Systems

Connections program participants identified the need for a comprehensive framework to help determine the value of linking newborn screening laboratory information management systems (LIMS) with child health information systems. The Institute recognized the potential for this information to support comprehensive follow-up and notification of results to the medical home.  We worked with Connections participants to design an evaluation framework that demonstrates:

• Opportunities where interoperability delivers significant impacts on health outcomes
• Impacts of integrated systems on lab testing and programmatic case management.

The resulting framework incorporates the major parameters of information quality, system quality, and service quality, as well as individual, organizational and economic impacts, and health and health services impacts.  We also developed a logic model to complement the framework.

We also developed a logic model for the framework.  The logic model relates characteristics of the system to health outcomes, depicts the logic of translating the technical and programmatic inputs of the integrated information system; how these inputs produce quality through better information, better service to stakeholders; how these quality improvements relate to the impact individuals make in doing their jobs or the overall impact a public health agency has in fulfilling its mission; and how all of these impacts taken together result in improvements health outcomes.

We applied the framework to the Rhode Island integrated child information system, KIDSNET, which interfaces with the New England Newborn Screening laboratory’s LIMS. A case study of the integration of the New England Newborn Screening Laboratory information system with KIDSNET provided a rich description of how the nine dimensions of the framework and the attributes of those dimensions can be used to examine where and how an integrated child health information system creates valuable efficiencies and program effectiveness.

The project was supported by a contract with the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL). Project partners included APHL, its Informatics Committee and Newborn Screening Committee, and the Rhode Island Department of Health.