January 17, 2013
STC Begins Work on California Health Information Exchange (HIE) Immunization
Gateway Service Project
STC has begun work on a contract to provide a statewide immunization record exchange
solution to support the California clinical community’s public health Meaningful Use efforts.
The secure exchange, unique in the nation, will ensure that providers’ patient immunization
records are electronically transmitted to the appropriate State immunization registry, thereby
supporting public health programs to reduce the impact of vaccine preventable disease on the
population of California and its visitors.
Read the University of California Davis Health System Press Release of January 17, 2013
http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/publish/news/newsroom/7383
STC, with the support of Cognosante LLC, has begun work on the Immunization Gateway
Service project for the California Health eQuality (CHeQ) program, managed by the University
of California Davis Institute for Population Health Improvement (IPHI). The STC/Cognosante
team will provide delivery and configuration of an Immunization Gateway Service, Provider
Registration Portal, and a Meaningful Use Message Validation Service to support healthcare
providers who report immunizations to one of California’s population-based immunization
information systems (IIS). The project represents a first-in-the-nation approach that links
different regional immunization registries through a common data exchange network.
The web service-based gateway will enable secure electronic transmission of immunization
events given by the clinical community through traditional clinics, retail health, and public
health agencies to the California Immunization Registry (CAIR) in accordance with the
meaningful use goals and objectives of the federal Office of the National Coordinator for Health
Information Technology (ONC). The California Health Information Exchange (HIE) program
supports these goals by utilizing standards compliant with requirements for certified Electronic
Health Record (EHR) technology. The ONC has identified the reporting of immunization data to
public health agencies as a priority for statewide HIE efforts.
The Immunization Gateway Service and Provider Registration Portal and Message Validation
Service provided by STC/Cognosante will increase the capacity of California’s current distinct
regional immunization registries to accept immunization data in a format that complies with
federal Meaningful Use requirements by creating loosely-coupled web service interfaces to
existing health information organizations, EHR hubs, and individual EHR implementations. It
will prepare the way for healthcare providers to report immunizations to a future consolidated
California statewide immunization information system by establishing a single web service
entry point that may be used by any provider from any geographic location. California’s
forward-thinking approach will provide a solution for the current regional immunization
registries that may be transitioned to the future statewide immunization information system
or be replaced by similar functionality.
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For this base component of the contract, the STC/Cognosante team is providing the following
planning, design, development, testing, and implementation services:
 Establishing and supporting a Provider Registration Portal and a Message Validation Service
to enable healthcare providers in California who wish to qualify for Stage 1 Meaningful Use
to register and receive their Facility ID, as required by the IIS, and test their systems, as
required by Stage 1 Meaningful Use attestation, thereby entering a queue for ongoing
reporting of immunization information.
 Establishing and supporting a flexible, scalable Immunization Gateway Service that provides
queuing and routing of immunization information to the IIS for all healthcare providers in
California utilizing the Health Level 7 (HL7) standards required by Stage 1 Meaningful Use
certification criteria for EHR technology.
 Providing a flexible solution to be further leveraged by California Public Health for the
transmission of additional data sets from providers to Public Health to meet current and
future statutorily required data reporting needs. The solution will use HL7 as the primary
standard with added flexibility to accept messages from other standards-based systems.
 Developing and supporting an Implementation Guide for Providers that details the use of
Meaningful Use-compliant standards to report immunizations via the Immunization
Gateway Service as well as one for the Provider Registration Portal and Message Validation
Service.
 Providing technical assistance to configure interfaces between CAIR and the Immunization
Gateway Service.
 Conducting User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to ensure that both the Provider Registration and
Message Validation Service and Immunization Gateway Service operate in accordance with
the implementation guide, requirements for Stage 1 Meaningful Use, and CAIR.
Scientific Technologies Corporation
4400 E. Broadway Blvd., Suite 705
Tucson, AZ 85711
480.745.8500 phone
480.745.8580 fax
info@stchome.com
www.stchome.com
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