The vendor required to provide surveillance and public health information reporting and exchange (SAPHIRE) system is crucial to support laboratory and case reporting for over 80 reportable conditions, including influenza, tuberculosis, measles, HIV, syphilis, and MPOX.
- SAPHIRE system maintenance workstream
• The system design is centered around the rhapsody integration engine and the operational data store (MySQL database).
• There are two supported rhapsody configurations.
• One for electronic laboratory reports (ELR) message processing and another for electronic case reports (ECR) message processing.
1. SAPHIRE system for electronic laboratory and case reporting
• The great majority of public health data related to required reporting of disease conditions are submitted electronically and managed by SAPHIRE.
• More than 200 entities are connected directly to this system and submit data on behalf of thousands of additional entities.
• These entities include healthcare providers, organizations, and laboratories that report their own data, and aggregators or hubs that report on behalf of multiple providers and laboratories. Incoming data are compared against existing results and reports to identify, match, and remove duplicate messages.
2. Electronic laboratory reporting
• Laboratories submit ELR messages to the SAPHIRE system.
• SAPHIRE processes these messages and transfers them to department enterprise rhapsody gateway for routing to downstream public health systems, including the disease, occupational health branch, office disease surveillance systems.
• Messages processed through SAPHIRE are used to monitor reportable conditions, including infectious disease and testing trends.
• Positive laboratory results received in SAPHIRE are processed and sent through to information.
• ELR processing is built around the rhapsody configuration, and operational data store, and includes the following high-level components:
• The ELR gateway supports approximately 200 entities including labs that report their own results, and aggregators, or hubs that report results for multiple labs.
• Data submission components are serverless and highly available providing secure infrastructure for data input into the system.
• The rhapsody integration engine is designed to connect to many different systems using a wide range of protocols.
• Hl7 2.3.1 messages are converted into hl7 2.5.1 formatted messages including creation of software (SFT) and specimen (SPM) segments according to data mapping specifications.
• ELR processing is integrated with clinical architecture Sy-medical via a rest API connection to uplift the LOINC, and SNOMED codes, and descriptions in some parts of the hl7 messages.
• Message validation processing includes validating the existence of all required fields and segments.
• Acknowledgement (ACK) and negative acknowledgement (NACK) messages are returned to the data submitters.
• Incoming messages containing laboratory results are compared against existing messages to identify, match, and remove duplicate messages.
• Business rules are maintained to comply with department data completion standards, and to meet the state's hl7 processing standards.
• Processed messages containing laboratory results are transferred to department enterprise rhapsody gateway for routing to downstream public health systems, including information.
• Data is also pulled from the MySQL tables into the department data warehouse.
3. Electronic case reporting (ECR)
• SAPHIRE receives ECR data via health information exchange networks such as the association of public health laboratories (APHL) informatics messaging services (AIMS) and formats it into multiple output types and passes the data to department.
• These output types include comma-separated values (.csv) file extracts which are imported by the information standard object access protocol (soap) integration to information, MySQL tables for system functionality and reporting, and various file type outputs into department directories for access by end users.
• Maintain the rhapsody integration engine configuration and operational data stores for ECR message processing.
• Ahold queue is implemented to reduce duplicate messages.
• It filters out earlier versions of documents so that the most recent and complete version is processed and sent to department.
• The merge and parse process extracts the conditions from the hl7 reportability response (RR) file and adds it to the electronic case report (ECR) document.
• The data in the document is extracted and formatted for consumption and processing.
• The electronic case report (ECR) xml document is run against a stylesheet to output an html format for human consumption.
• The feed splitter separates messages based on the organizations and condition for routing to the correct department destination.
• The department program is responsible for maintaining the approved senders list, which is used by the feed splitter to route messages to the appropriate department destination.
• Vendor assistance is needed to implement the approved senders list.
• Data is also pulled from the MySQL tables into the department data warehouse.
• Vendor support with connecting health information exchange (HIE) or other intermediaries for ECR messages that are not submitted through APHL and AIMS may also be needed from the SAPHIRE vendor.
4. Sprint management
• Maintain azure DeVos to manage and track all maintenance and operations (M&O) work items ensuring transparency, accountability, and proper documentation of tasks.
• Maintain and manage the SAPHIRE product backlog items.
• Develop and maintain a sprint backlog that defines the M&O work items committed for completion to effectively address program needs.
• Lead regular product backlog refinement sessions with the program to review and refine the product backlog items.
• Conduct sprint planning sessions where the program and the contractor’s team collaborate to discuss the sprint goal and the next priority of work for the sprint.
• Conduct daily standup sessions with the program and the development team during each of the sprints to inspect progress towards the sprint goal.
• Conduct demonstration sessions to review and demonstrate the work completed during the sprint.
• Support planning and execution of user acceptance testing (UAT).
• Resolve defects identified during UAT or parallel testing.
• Resolve findings from department security vulnerability testing, such as Veracode.
• Conduct performance and load testing, as required by the state.
• Conduct and lead a sprint retrospective session for each sprint, focusing on the overall sprint processes.
• During the sprint retrospective, the program and development teams will discuss what went right during the sprint and areas for improvement.
• For larger system modifications, manage the work as an epic spanning multiple sprints.
• Provide technical support as well as research, analysis, and testing related to requested potential system changes.
• Conduct the system configuration, design, development, testing, implementation, and postimplementation verification according to an agile methodology.
• All system documentation, including requirements, and business rules when system updates are deployed to reflect the current production system.
• Maintain all code for the SAPHIRE system in a repository in the department azure DeVos environment.
• Resolve any issues identified during the static code analysis that automatically runs after a code commit.
• The contractor must not use production data during testing and development.
- Contract Period/Term: 3 years
- Bidder's Conference Date: January 14, 2026
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: January 26, 2026
