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Serving Public Health

APHL Informatics Messaging Services (AIMS) is a secure, cloud based platform that serves as a technical intermediary, accelerating accelerates the implementation of health messaging by providing shared services to aid in the visualization, interoperability, security and hosting of electronic data. The ability to visualize and share data efficiently, while hosting applications securely is a critical capability for public health. AIMS Platform solves each of these difficult challenges for the public health community. Originally conceived to maintain multiple point-to-point electronic interfaces and accommodate ever-changing transport mechanisms, the platform is now the default solution for public health in the 21st century.​

Enabling Data Exchange

AIMS Platform securely transports millions of messages on a monthly basis. Examples of data currently exchanged through AIMS include: ​

  • Aggregated Influenza test result data from public health laboratories to CDC

  • Vaccine-preventable disease reports from testing centers of excellence to CDC

  • Biological threat data from laboratories within the Laboratory Response Network to CDC

  • Immunization data exchange among several public health jurisdictions

  • Electronic laboratory reporting (ELR) between eligible hospitals and their respective jurisdictions

  • National Quest ELR data to all jurisdictions

  • Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) through the Advanced Molecular Detection (AMD) program

  • Electronic Case Reporting (eCR) between providers and jurisdictions across the US

  • Electronic Test Orders and Results (ETOR) between public health laboratories and their data exchange partners via Detor 

Creating Efficiencies

Routing messages through the AIMS services greatly enhance the users’ ability to manage data exchange routes and trading partners; once a trading partner is on AIMS, they can send and receive with any trading partner already on the Platform with minimal effort rather than maintaining multiple connections to a variety of senders and pollers.

In addition, the translation and transformation services that AIMS offers make it easier for agencies and laboratories to exchange data with a variety of senders and receivers. AIMS provides interoperability between a variety of transport protocols, which allows a sender using one protocol to send data securely to a receiver that uses another. Transport protocols that the Platform can process include PHIN MS, Direct, IHE XDR, NwHIN, CDR, Web Services, AWS S3, SFTP and VPN.

Additional benefits to using AIMS include:

  • Common architecture and services

  • Shareable open source architecture

  • Centralized processing and message routing

  • Real-time monitoring and audit systems

  • Reduced data translation and transformation complexity

  • Reduced development and support costs

  • Flexible capacity technical infrastructure

  • Five-year authentication certificates

  • Vocabulary and HL7 message support

  • Experienced and dedicated technical support

  • Strengthening security and compliance

Learn More

Learn more about the AIMS Platform​ 
For more on the history and impact of AIMS, read Our Story​ 

Contact Michelle Meigs, managing director, Informatics, at Michelle.Meigs@aphl.org for more information or to schedule a discovery session.