The development and implementation of a robust data management infrastructure will be critical for assigning and managing investigations, linking clients with confirmed and probable COVID-19 to their contacts, and evaluating success and opportunities for improvement in a case investigation and contact tracing program.
COVID-19 case investigations will likely be triggered by one of three events: Data management systems should be able to capture these three types of events electronically.
Ideally laboratory, provider, and contact case reports should be transmitted to the local health authority electronically and then seamlessly imported into the system in an automated fashion.