The Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) has changed its name to the New Zealand Institute for Public Health and Forensic Science (PHF Science) as of 1 July 2025. The new website address is www.phfscience.nz. Visitors will automatically be redirected to the new address. Please check and update any links and bookmarks after this change.

Ngā pūnaha mōhiohio hauora

Health information systems

The data and informatics team provides a number of services and expertise at PHF Science. Including data science, data visualisation, data modelling, data integration, and specialist application and analytics support.

Data science header
Public health Infectious disease intelligence & surveillance Pandemic preparedness Wastewater epidemiology Antimicrobial resistance Precision health

Our team

Our data and informatics team

The data and informatics team are at the forefront of public health informatics, systems integration, and advanced data analytics, supporting PHF Science initiatives for data driven public health surveillance. The team is working on projects that involve health data standards and systems integration with wider health sector, real-time data curation, data and analytics and visualizations with embedded predictive modelling to enhance disease surveillance in New Zealand.  

The team works with the PHF Science laboratory, diagnostic laboratories, and epidemiology teams to provide technical expertise in the support of disease testing, surveillance reporting and insights. 

The team also works closely with Te Whatu Ora providing complex integrations of surveillance data with Te Whatu Ora systems and design expertise for health systems. The team maintains and updates several of Te Whatu Ora’s HISO standards including: 

  • New Zealand SNOMED CT subset for Notifiable disease
  • HISO 10008.4:2020 COVID-19 HL7 Reporting Standard
  • HISO 10008.3:2019 Notifiable Disease HL7 Messaging

Experts in PHF Science's data and informatics team include

  • Data analytics and visualisation engineers
  • Laboratory informaticians
  • Application support specialists
  • Research scientists
  • Lab scientists
  • Software developers
  • Business analysts
  • Solutions architects

Analytics and dashboards

The team manages and develops interactive dashboards including real-time, early warning and intelligence reporting dashboards. This includes integrating multiple and diverse data sources from across the health and environment fields, and social media platforms:

Digital Health Observatory

The Digital Health Observatory is a prototype early warning dashboard looking at how secondary data sources can be used as part of an early warning system along with conventional surveillance systems.

The Early Aberration Reporting System (EARS)

The early aberration reporting system (EARS) is a surveillance tool that has been developed by the Epidemiology and Data and Informatics teams. It uses algorithms on surveillance data captures from a number of sources to flags anomalies to help with the timely detection of disease outbreaks.

Surveillance Dashboards

The data and informatics team works closely with the epidemiology team to provide weekly, quarterly, and annual surveillance reporting dashboards.

  • Acute respiratory illness infections dashboard
  • Notifiable disease dashboard
  • Drugs in wastewater
  • Vaccine preventable diseases
  • Sexually transmitted infections

Application support

The data and informatics team supports the day to day running and development our key surveillance applications at PHF Science.

Read on for more about these systems:

EpiSurv notifiable disease database 

EpiSurv notifiable disease database 

EpiSurv is a surveillance database for notifiable diseases operated by PHF Science on behalf of the Ministry of Health. Cases and outbreaks of disease are reported in EpiSurv by public health staff across the country into this live database. 

PHF Science manages the database infrastructure and integration with other systems, performs quality checks of data, and undertakes analysis to provide intelligence on notifiable diseases. 

Instructions for EpiSurv case report forms are available on our help site.

Clinical Data Repository

Clinical Data Repository

The PHF Science clinical data repository has been established for all COVID-19 test reports, both positive and negative, from various sources across New Zealand. As well as streamlining vital data on COVID-19 testing for public health action and reporting, Eclair is also supporting electronic ordering for COVID based testing and the recording of COVID test results via various sources. CDR Support provides assistance to Eclair users and those integrating with PHF Science. Key users are COVID-19 reporting facilities, COVID-19 laboratories in New Zealand and applications in the Health Sector. 

Please note: CDR does not support end users or patients regarding COVID-19 results. Please contact your public health unit or health provider if you have queries.

Surveys and forms

Surveys and Forms

PHF Science hosts a secure web application for online surveys, forms and databases. PHF Science manages a number of health data reporting and recording tools through this system. CDR support provide overall support to both internal and external users.  

Helpdesk

Helpdesk

PHF Science manages the national notifiable disease database (EpiSurv) on behalf of Manatū Hauora (Ministry of Health), as well as a national Clinical Data Repository (Eclair), and PHF Science data collection forms.  

Help desk support for these systems is available through our service desk at CDR support. CDR support also provide configurational support for Eclair, undertake public health AIDE distribution and support the new gonorrhoea surveillance system pilot. 

Contact CDR support: cdrsupport@phfscience.nz or 0800 377 237.