These resources cover basic and advanced topics to supplement your IIS training and orientation. For a more complete suite of in-depth resources related to IIS, see the American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) resource repository. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also makes available information on IIS.
Hit the ground running by learning the basics of IIS.
This free, 18-day email course is intended to get you up to speed on all things IIS: what they are, how they work, and how they’re supported.
This series of three popular IIS courses builds a fundamental understanding of essential topics for IIS staff.
The fundamentals of data exchange between IIS and other systems. Download quick reference guides on interoperability:
Learn about a fundamental building block for interoperability between IIS and other systems: the HL7 standard. Download quick reference guides on HL7 basics:
An introduction to data quality dimensions and strategies for maintaining and improving data quality in an IIS.
This series of historical spotlights tells stories from the history of IIS through the lens of different key themes:
Designed to build on the fundamentals, these specialized trainings take a deeper dive into special topics.
Immunization Evaluation & Forecasting
This course helps IIS staff at all levels interact with their forecasting systems or functionality to enable them to better troubleshoot user questions, onboard providers, advocate for systems changes, and work with vendors.
Communications and Change Management
This course explores the importance of being an effective communicator across IIS roles and how to approach and plan for key change management.
Advanced HL7 for IIS: course and quick reference guides
Building on the fundamentals courses, Advanced HL7 for IIS offers a deeper dive into how HL7 works. Those involved in interoperability will find this particularly useful, exploring conformance, constraints and message profiles, and will leave the course with a better understanding of how the Implementation Guide constrains the HL7 standard.
Download quick reference guides on advanced HL7 topics:
This course provides an overview of authorized partners, both internal and external to the IIS team, who use IIS data. The course covers what all users should know before using IIS data as well as how data use is impacted by laws, regulations and policies.
In 2024, PHII hosted a four-part webinar series in collaboration with CDC. The webinars included best practices, industry standards and use cases to help jurisdictions understand the procurement process from start to finish.
Data modernization for IIS one-pager guide
This brief step-by-step guide provides tips to ensure that IIS are connected to the efforts to modernize the public health system, and offers supplementary resources to learn more about how the Data Modernization Initiative intersects with the work of IIS.
PHII provides a set of multi-media, deep-dive stories on individual jurisdictional data modernization journeys. These stories are intended to provide lessons learned, emerging promising practices and inspiration to other STLT agencies beginning or continuing their DMI journeys.
While not designed or tailored specifically for the IIS community, these other PHII-created trainings have particular relevance and usefulness to IIS teams.
IT Lifecycle Fundamentals for Public Health
Based on our popular 8-week course on Designing & Managing Public Health Information Systems, this offering is a self-paced e-learning course that introduces the eight phases of information system development, known as the IT lifecycle.
The Stakes Are High: Stakeholder Engagement for Public Health
This course teaches learners to effectively identify, analyze and engage public health agency stakeholders.
Guiding Principles for Managing Contracts
This course teaches the six guiding principles of contract management within public health. The course includes access to checklists learners can use on the job to support better performance and accountability of contracted organizations.
This collection of actionable tools and templates is designed to support you in day-to-day operational tasks related to managing and supporting your IIS. Providing concrete guidance on stakeholder analysis, project management, tracking requirements, training, testing, staffing and more, these tools simplify and assist in your support of day-to-day operations of IIS.
Functional requirements for IIS
This subset of the IIS Operations Tools provides a suite of tools specifically focused on IIS requirements. These tools provide clarity on what IIS technology must do and how it must operate to align with the CDC IIS Functional Standards and programmatic and immunization stakeholder needs. The essential requirements paint a picture of a baseline IIS, with foundational functions, capabilities and attributes necessary to support immunization program activities.
This toolkit provides a roadmap to guide you through an IIS platform migration or other large-scale IT project. Leverage project management best practices and dozens of tested tools to direct the process, save time and ensure project success. Access tools by chronological project phase or by topic area.
Adhere to best practices in the procurement process to help your IIS program improve performance and sustainability. Information technology procurements are often complex, both technically and legally, and require thoughtful planning and lots of lead time. The guidance in this toolkit can help you to avoid frustrating, time-consuming and even costly missteps.
The IIS Core Competency Model presents a framework of core competency domains for IIS staff, offering a pathway for IIS performance success to align with national immunization goals and recognized operational strategies.
These sample role descriptions support the IIS Core Competency Model in providing guidance for identifying staffing needs and subsequent recruiting for IIS.
Delve into lessons learned from the world of IIS through the personal stories of projects and people working in the immunization space.
Subscribe to PHII’s podcast, “Inform Me, Informatics,” on iTunes, Google Play, Player.fm, Spotify and most podcatchers.
Therese Hoyle on the informatics behind immunizations (2017)
In this episode, Therese Hoyle, longtime veteran of immunization information systems (IIS), shares her perspectives on the early days of IIS and how technology has transformed public health systems.
Minnesota success story: working toward health equity using information systems (2016)
Sudha Setty of the Minnesota Immunization Information Connection joins the podcast to explain how she and her colleagues used IIS data to identify and bridge vaccination coverage gaps for Somali-Americans.
Exploring immunization information systems with Mary Beth Kurilo (2016)
Oregon state IIS veteran and AIRA leader Mary Beth Kurilo joins the podcast to explain how state information systems keep the U.S. population healthy and vaccinated.
Mary Beth Kurilo’s professional path (2016)
On this bonus episode of PHII’s podcast, Mary Beth Kurilo returns to the podcast to share her own professional story and explain what led her to the world of immunization information systems.
Launching a new immunization information system in Oklahoma (2016)
This blog describes PHII’s collaboration with the state of Oklahoma to support the development and rollout of their new IIS.
Challenges and changes: preparing a new generation of IIS managers (2016)
Each year, PHII hosts training for new immunization information system managers under CDC funding; this blog describes the 2016 training, and explains why the work of IIS managers is foundational to good population health.
AIRA, immunization and public health’s “moon mission” (2015)
PHII’s former director Dave Ross (now president of the Task Force for Global Health) describes his experience keynoting AIRA’s 2015 national meeting and reflects on his years with the IIS community.
Lending a hand to IIS managers, the unsung heroes of immunization records (2014)
This blog describes the first year of PHII’s CDC-funded IIS manager training.
