CDC Streamlines Access to Clinical Laboratory Data

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In September 2024, CDC awarded five-year contracts to multiple laboratory companies, more than doubling the amount of clinical laboratory data that will be available to public health practitioners. Now, public health professionals have enhanced access to critical clinical laboratory data across more than 200 reportable conditions.

Commercial laboratory data received from Labcorp, Quest Diagnostics, Aegis, ARUP, and Ginkgo Bioworks will be accessible in the One CDC Data Platform (1CDP). 1CDP is a unified data platform created to support both day-to-day science as well as public health emergency responses. 1CDP users will have access to a suite of common tools and reusable capabilities that will help to reduce silos and maximize resource efficiency. There will be no charge for CDC programs or state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) partners to access these data in 1CDP, providing the opportunity to improve public health situational awareness on a broad scale.

Public-Private Partnerships to Expand Laboratory Data

Before these innovative contracts, CDC programs had one-off, separate, highly specific contracts with commercial laboratory companies, exclusively for their program's area of interest. With each program maintaining their own contracts, there was variety in the parameters outlined, including the source of the data, who had access, how frequently data were shared, and more. This was cumbersome for both laboratory companies and CDC programs, highlighting the need for a more efficient way to receive these data.

Several years ago, CDC staff began working to standardize commercial laboratory agreements and align contract language over time. Still, there were multiple contracts necessary and in circulation among CDC programs. After much anticipation, in September 2024, many CDC programs and commercial laboratories share identical contracts with consistent rules — all authorized users will have access to standardized, de-identified data sent by the laboratories. All laboratories will send data at the same cadence, with the same fields, for the same conditions, with one common entry point. This has standardized and streamlined clinical laboratory collection, allowing for collaboration across all levels of public health, while prioritizing patient confidentiality.

This public-private partnership has been years in the making. Over a series of meetings, CDC and the American Clinical Laboratory Association discussed the types of agreements that might be needed to balance workloads on both sides. The uniform contracts allow CDC programs, state and local partners, and commercial laboratories to avoid individually cleaning, validating, and managing these data and contracts.

Progressing the Public Health Data Strategy

This pioneering work has also helped CDC move closer to reaching a Public Health Data Strategy milestone (1.06) intended to improve public health situational awareness through increased access to clinical laboratory data. These uniform contracts will also expand testing capacity for new and emerging pathogens, such as highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N1) virus. During an emergency response, in collaboration with CDC, laboratories would be able to quickly develop new tests, begin and scale up their testing in a timely manner, and send the resulting data back to public health partners in near real-time. With this progress, CDC is significantly bolstering nationwide laboratory public health preparedness.

Notably, this work is complementary to — but does not replace — traditional electronic laboratory reporting related to states for reportable conditions. The de-identified data available in 1CDP are designed to facilitate public health action based on enhanced situational awareness.

Resources

• Strengthening Response to Public Health Threats Through Expanded Laboratory Testing and Access to Data
• Public Health Data Strategy