Electronic Laboratory Reporting:

Electronic Laboratory Reporting allows laboratories to report the mandatory reportable infectious diseases to the Division of Disease Control in an automated and secure process.

Getting Started?

Review North Dakota's list of reportable infection diseases and determine for which reportable diseases your lab does testing. The list of reportable conditions can be found by clicking on this link Reportable Conditions (pdf). See the following website for a complete definition of Rules

Please note that any high priority cases still need to be reported immediately by calling 1.800.472.2180 or 701.328.2378

• Determine whether your lab uses LOINC (test) and SNOMED (result) codes. The preference is to receive LOINC and SNOMED codes.
• Determine whether your lab can send an electronic file in Health Level 7 (HL7) format. Disease Control will accept either HL7 version 2.3.1 or HL7 version 2.5.1.
  • If sending HL7 version 2.3.1, consult the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) HL7 version 2.3.1 Implementation Guide
    • If sending HL7 version 2.5.1, the most recent version of the HL7 version 2.5.1 Implementation Guide: Electronic Laboratory Reporting to Public Health, Release 1 should be followed. This guide can be purchased from HL7.org; in the HL7 Store it can be found in 'HL7 Standard Implementation and Educational Guides. Note: HL7 version 2.5.1 is the standard for compliance with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Health and Human Services, meaningful use criteria for electronic submission of lab results to public health agencies.
• This first phase of ELR consists of information exchange between Disease Control and the laboratory. Disease Control will need to know which infectious diseases the laboratory will be reporting and will need a list of test and result codes (LOINC, SNOMED or other local codes used by the hospital software system) that will be reported.
• The laboratory and Disease Control will determine the format of the file to be sent, the frequency of transmission and the method of transmission.

During the testing phase, traditional disease reporting will need to continue until both the laboratory and Disease Control have verified that the new electronic reporting production environment is working correctly. Transmissions will be via secure message exchange. Currently North Dakota is utilizing a secure ftp site

While Disease Control will be available to provide some assistance with coding reportable conditions, the hospital IT personnel and software vendors will be responsible for most of the coding and implementation .

If you have questions please contact us at disease@nd.gov. In the subject line, please put Electronic Laboratory Reporting or call 701-328-3278.

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