Definitions Priority terms: Use case User story Scenario Public Health event Participant / Actor Public Health report Public Health Reporting Trigger Data element

Use case A written description of steps or actions between users (or actors) and software system, that enable the actor to achieve a goal Example: A provider (EHRsystem) identifies information that needs to be complied into a report and sent to a public health agency, because a certain trigger event has occurred.

User story User Story describes in technology-free terminology the business process that is used by its business actors (people) or technical actors (systems involved in the process) to achieve their goals. The User Story, synonym to the business case, describes WHAT the process does. It is written by users to establish user ownership of requirements and contains the user role, their goal, and their motivation for the functionality.

Scenario One instance of a use case, whether it is primary or alternate path through the use case. The primary or alternate path could be viewed as different user stories. Example: Birth of a baby can trigger several reports to public health agencies

Participant / Actor A term in Unified Modeling Language (UML) that specifies a role played by a user or any other system that interacts with the subject. Actors may represent roles played by human users, systems, external hardware, or other subjects.

Public Health event A risk exposure or occurrence of condition of concern (disease for example) to a public health program because of its impact or potential impact on one or more persons or animals. A public health event and a public health case are related but not synonymous. A public health event is a temporal occurrence that, in epidemiologic terms, is often conceptualized as an interaction or the result of an interaction between agent, host, and environment. A public health case is an observation about the host, i.e., person or animal, in the epidemiologic triad of agent-host environment.

Public Health report A collection of data (information) that describes a PH event is exchanged and is related to the execution of essential public health functions (assessment, policy and assurance). Initial PH report: Type of report that contains the initial (first time) notification about a PH event to a specific PH agency – It could also be called event detection or identification Follow up PH report: Any other type of report related to a PH event after the initial report (need to decide, if corrections to the initial report fall under this or not!) For example a response to a case investigation or an adverse event.

Public Health Reporting Trigger A trigger event is an explicit set of conditions that initiate the transfer of information between actors.

Data element atomic unit of data that has precise meaning or precise semantics. A data element has: An identification such as a data element namedata element name A clear data element definitiondata element definition Optional: One or more representation terms (synonyms)representation terms enumerated values Code (metadata)Code (metadata)