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After 7 Years: National Disease-Tracking System Is Not Done

computerworld.com — You might think that in the event of a major epidemic across the U.S., public health officials at the federal, state and local levels could track the outbreak electronically, using real-time data to try to control the spread of the disease.But you'd be wrong.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 16, 2008

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  • inactive, on 07/16/2008, -4/+14Newsflash, governments can't do anything right and efficiently.
  • Sperlock, on 07/15/2008, -1/+10One thing the article did not touch upon is that the CDC version of NEDSS has been promising modules for certain diseases, such as STDs, for 4+ years now but has yet to deliver. I've also heard the rumor that the CDC will stop supporting their version of NEDSS sometime in the near future.
  • fleischner, on 07/16/2008, -1/+4I'm so looking forward to when the government is in charge of my health care...
  • doctechnical, on 07/16/2008, -0/+3I am shocked - SHOCKED - to hear that a government program was not implemented in a speedy and efficient manner.

    But I'm sure they'll get national health care right.
  • jcdickerson, on 07/16/2008, -0/+3Wow... I actually was a Technical Lead UI designer on the NEDSS base system for two+ years, so it's wierd to go to Digg and see this. I will not be an apologist for this project; the CDC management AND the contractors (SAIC, Northrup, and CSC, not in that order) all both made some REALLY dumb decisions over the years (Using XSLT to render the UI instead of just plain 'ol web forms was one of the big ones, not to mention using the HL7 data model as the data model for the APPLICATION ITSELF). This project was one of the reasons I'm no longer doing government work (and am now a libertarian).
  • mjhamilton, on 07/16/2008, -1/+3Name one thing, other than create bureaucracy, the government does better than the private sector.
  • LMControl, on 07/16/2008, -4/+6Somehow, some way..... I'm sure this will be Bush's fault too.
  • GoatMonkey2112, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1I interviewed for a job there back in January. Now I'm glad I didn't get it.
  • GrumpyOldMan, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1"Yer doin a heckava job..."
  • StevesJobs, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1I'm never wrong.
  • linagee, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Anytime you ever go to a doctor, hospital, pharmacist, etc. and ask "what is this?", if they think it's an STD they enter it into a database. Then you are tracked like it's 1984. Once you get an actual test done and it's confirmed negative, the mark is removed from your record. It's so easy to implement.
  • serif69, on 07/16/2008, -1/+2In this country, the system will serve as nothing more than a news byte to scare people about an impending epidemic because ten people have a cold.
  • Barackalypse, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Why would anyone assume the government would be capable of doing anything except violating its citizens civil liberties and spending money? I bet the vast majority of the people on digg aren't surprised the system isn't done. In fact having worked in IT, I'd be shocked if it was, almost none of these large scale projects ever get finished in the budgeted time.
  • tian2992, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Going to Space, Make a primitive nation a great power on earth (USSR, China…), Provide Healthcare (France is rated as having the best healthcare on the world, and it has Socialized healthcare).

    It is not that Government itself sucks, is just that various Governments have sucked.

    Europe and Japan have socialized healthcare and public education (from Kinder to University and beyond).

    USA has always aimed for the individual benefit, in most of the other World Powers they have aimed as well for the common benefit. It is just that USA's Government has always been inefficent, or it is just that it became that way?
  • beauley, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1For many centuries doctors or "medicine men" have treated some individuals with varying diseases of different severeties, some for most of their lives. Many were never cured of their ailment, probably due to improper medicines prescribed for their particular infirmity. There must be a better way.
    http://www.healthmad.com/Conditions-and-Diseases/D ...
    Disease Prevention Is The Key
  • inactive, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Would this really help?

    If we got a virulent, (very) communicable, flu on our hands it'd spread the world over in 48 hours and around the time people started dropping it'd be too late. More than likely it'd look like a cold!

    Just throwing that out there...
  • DaFunk, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Yes, because identifying, isolating and tracking a disease outbreak and subsequent migration in a population of 300 million with rapidly changing definitions and known diseases is a simple, easy operation. I realize it's fun to pick on "the government" when they fail or don't get things done as quickly as we like, but I think some of us are vastly underestimating the task at hand.
  • SpacePoet, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1That's pretty scary. The article says the old way of reporting is weekly reports from manually entered state reports, weekly. So it could take a week to get updates if an outbreak happens. And why? Cause we're out of money, that's why. It says they are held up waiting for a few states. Is the system up and running even without those states or are they holding up the whole thing?
  • jdfalk, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1"complicating factor is that there's no single technology that the states need to deploy. The CDC offers the free NEDSS Base System, which is built on top of Java and uses Red Hat Inc.'s JBoss application server software. But states can build their own applications or buy them from the handful of vendors that sell NEDSS-compliant products."

    "Java destroying our nation one state at a time." -- I KID!

    But seriously I hate Java.
  • inactive, on 07/15/2008, -3/+3complicating factor is that there's no single technology that the states need to deploy. The CDC offers the free NEDSS Base System, which is built on top of Java and uses Red Hat Inc.'s JBoss application server software. But states can build their own applications or buy them from the handful of vendors that sell NEDSS-compliant products.
  • 4midwestacademy, on 07/16/2008, -0/+0This is a little frightening.
  • tian2992, on 07/16/2008, -6/+2Generalization FTL!!!

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