The Public Health Laboratory Interoperability Project (PHLIP) aims to establish reliable laboratory data exchange between state public health laboratories and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by fostering collaboration in IT and laboratory science. The collaboration is intended to extend beyond the founding partners (APHL and CDC) to include all relevant public and private entities.
The immediate goal is to develop, pilot and deploy viable IT architecture options and tools for the exchange of electronic laboratory data at all levels of public health laboratories. The process requires extensive collaboration among participants to:
• Gain consensus on test methods/results
• Develop short term and long term IT (centralized) architectures for lab data exchange
• Promote data transmission of information among all stakeholders
• Launch a laboratory informatics portal
• Support laboratory information system user groups
Through participation in the PHLIP initiative, the laboratory community aims to:
• Raise the current capability of public health laboratory data exchange to a national business standard
• Reduce the overhead or expense of transmitting laboratory test orders and results to partners