I have been involved with the TriSano project for the past 20 months as a member of the core development team. My role on the development team is as a subject matter expert (SME) by bringing a local health department perspective in Epidemiology, Surveillance, Communicable Disease Investigation & Case Management, Environmental Health, and Administration to the TriSano project. The TriSano project has provided local health departments with a centralized disease surveillance system and ability to manage diseases that they must oversee in order to control and eliminate disease in their communities.

I represent Nurses, investigation and the needs of smaller local health departments. Because of our size we need an efficient and flexible solution to disease reporting and investigation as well as tracking the diseases in our county. We are trying to build TriSano in a way that promotes the application to guiding a nurse or local health official on how to appropriately conduct an investigation. This will prove useful for new employees and those who do not do investigations as their primary responsibility, as well as during an outbreak or Bioterrorism incident.

We believe TriSano is going to allow us to track diseases better and identify unusual disease situations faster. This idea of picking up on something days, weeks, months earlier translates to fewer illnesses, fewer hospitalizations and maybe even fewer deaths. There are systems that do what TriSano does that cost millions off the shelf.

David Jackson is a product manager for the Utah Department of Health and is currently responsible for overseeing the development and implementation of a NEDSS-compatible system to support Utah public health business needs. Mr. Jackson has been with UDOH for more than nine years during which time he has served as the Communicable Disease Surveillance Program Manager and an infectious disease epidemiologist.

TriSano demonstrates the power of an iterative, user-centered software design process. By focusing on the actual needs and workflows of the system’s day-to-day users, the developers have built at system that is far more likely to succeed than systems built using more traditional development methodologies. Put bluntly, a poorly-designed system that does not meet the needs of front-line public health workers will not end up being used properly (if indeed it ends up being used at all), and will lead to incomplete and untrustworthy data. The inverse of this statement is not exactly true—a good system does not automatically ensure good data—but I would argue that a good system is a necessary precondition for good data collection. To the extent that TriSano, through its user-centered design, helps its users collect comprehensive and reliable data about cases of infectious disease, it will make researchers’ and epidemiologists’ jobs much easier.

The team. With fantastic leadership from Mike and the SME's, we long ago entered the 'performing' stage of development. The core developers all share the same vision and drive. We trust in each other's ability to deliver. And even though we're spread out across the country, there is a level of camaraderie that makes working on TriSano a joy. Heck, I'm doing it now and its Saturday.

Pete Lacey joined Collaborative Software Initiative from Burton Group where he was a Senior Consultant and Analyst assisting global 2000 companies on the architecture and best practices surrounding the design and implementation of mission critical systems. Pete became a leading contributor on TriSano in January 2008.

As someone who has worked at state, local, federal, and international levels for the last 32 years, I believe that TriSano marks a sea change in the development of surveillance and outbreak management software. It supports a true collaborative process with application developers and local and state subject matter experts working together to create new features and functions in a rapid manner.

The TriSano application has implemented features that the public health community has been urgently requesting for years, such as open source development, the ability to get out the data you put into a system, simplicity of use, the flexibility of adding fields to the application, both on the core forms, and the ability to add new questionnaires. It also allows HL7 messaging for electronic laboratory reports, and allows for routing and tracking of work assignments so nothing falls through the cracks. It facilitates communication among public health managers and staff, has strong analysis, visualization and reporting tools, and supports electronic communication of information with the private medical community.

Moving from a siloed, paper based environment to a central, flexible application is a huge opportunity to simplify the lives of public health officials.

Ed Copony joined Collaborative Software Initiative from Liberty Mutual. Ed has experience in software architecture and large system development. Ed began his IT career during the San Francisco dot-com boom of the late 90s doing web application development. Since then, Ed has worked for a variety of IT shops, leading teams in the development of J2EE applications, continuously integrated and tested environments, portals, and content management systems.

I manage the development team, nurture the Lean / Open Source best practices process, work on automation of the build & deployments..

Mike Herrick joined the Collaborative Software Initiative from Liberty Mutual Insurance where he led a cross-functional innovation team. Prior to Liberty Mutual, Mike worked for IsisWorks, Mentor Graphics, eXcelon (now known as “Sonic Software”), and Andersen Consulting (now known as “Accenture”). Mike has experience with product development, product management, information technology architecture, IT strategy, large system development and systems integration.

I think it's a game changer. Not just because it's a real open source solution to a public health problem, but because it demonstrates to the old guard that you don't need five years and an army of consultants to write public health software. That's a big deal when you're talking about users who still rely on 20 year old DOS programs to do their job.