Sentinel 5.17.5 User Guide

Introduction to Sentinel

Sentinel is a web-based disease surveillance and management system that can support state and local communicable disease reporting activities. The application is designed to be an integral component of a statewide disease, bioterrorism, and emergency preparedness system.

Sentinel offers the following key features:

Investigation and case management
Case assignment
Electronic laboratory reporting (ELR)
Alerts / Notifications
Collection, collation, and storing of supplemental data
NETSS report generation
HL7 CDC export

Patient deduplication
Case deduplication
Outbreak Management System (OMS) integration
Spatial visualization
Reporting, including administrative report, disease by demographics report, disease historical report, and EPI curve report
User management

Based on the CDC PHIN standards and architecture and conforming to HIPAA privacy and security guidelines, Sentinel implements the CDC logical data model and is capable of electronic data entry, data transformation, and statistical reporting. It provides the infrastructure to support disease reporting, supplemental data collection and reporting, electronic laboratory reporting, master patient indexing, user/roles management, code management, and HL7 messaging. Sentinel also serves as a framework for the future condition-specific Program Area Modules (PAMs) such as TB PAM.

Commonly Used Terms

The following terms are used interchangeably throughout this guide:

Case and investigation refer to the public health communicable disease event
Disease specific forms and supplemental forms refer to the forms used in Sentinel to collect case investigation data. These forms are available in two formats: PDF and HTML. Since both formats contain the same fields, you can use either one, depending on your preference
LHJ (Local Health Jurisdiction), LPHU (Local Public Health Unit), and PHD (Public Health District) refer to your state's Local/Public Health department, jurisdiction, unit, and so on
Region and District refer to your state's region or district, but both are used interchangeably in this document
Reportable Condition #2 and Disease Name 2 are used interchangeably, primarily in reports
Sentinel, Sentinel application, application, system, and so on, are used to refer to this application, the Sentinel Electronic Disease Surveillance System

This application may differ slightly depending on your state's configuration. Not all fields and options described in this guide apply to every state or user access level.

Sentinel Integration with Other Products

Sentinel can interface without systems such as the Outbreak Management System (OMS) to allow for queries, creating new human and non-human cases, and updating outbreak names. It can also interface with the Hospital Case Management Reporting System, also known as the Health Care Facility (HCF) Reporting System, to search, create, and edit healthcare facility cases. If authorized, it can also run reports.

Sentinel also has the ability to interface with an immunization registry that can accept HL7 standard requests for patient immunization records.

Please contact your STC representative for technical specifications and instructions.

The Case Notification Messaging Support (CNMS) includes:

Full Varicella support in Sentinel
Generic message support in Sentinel
West Nile Virus (Arbonet) message support in Sentinel