The Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is putting the finishing touches on an application that the agency says will transform the way the federal government detects and responds to food-borne hazards.
The software, called the Public Health Information System (PHIS), is a Web-based application designed to dramatically improve the surveillance and collection of data about the nation's food supply chain and issue alerts faster than ever about food-borne health threats.
FSIS is testing the system and expects to launch it by the fall of this year. The system will "better identify food safety risks before they result in outbreaks or recalls," says Neil Gafney, a spokesman for FSIS. Other expected benefits include streamlining the agency's export program by automating paper-based processes, such as applying for export approvals and certificates.
Gafney says the system will also help FSIS labs plan their workload more efficiently. For example, today FSIS labs receive product samples for analysis from field inspectors in a haphazard fashion, resulting in surges and lulls of lab activity.
"PHIS will automate the lab sample scheduling process," he says. "Inspection personnel will use a laboratory sample reservation system to identify the day on which a sample will be collected and sent to a lab," based on lab resources and operating schedules.
FSIS began development on PHIS in 2007, in response to criticism by Congress and others that FSIS did not have a comprehensive and high-quality data infrastructure to support an information-driven approach to inspection.
The system has four main components: domestic inspection, import re-inspection, export certification and predictive analytics. The domestic inspection piece will contain detailed information about goods various food suppliers produce. It will also have rules for scheduling audits of an establishment's food safety plan.
The results of those assessments will be captured electronically in PHIS. The import component of the system will schedule port-of-entry re-inspections and have rules to set the scope of foreign country audits based on their past performance. It will also receive electronic health certificates from foreign governments and advanced notice about shipments coming to the U.S.
The export system will automate the export certification process, which has been paper-based, ensuring that the most up-to-date rules for exports are followed in the certification process.
Predictive analytics will monitor data in real time, flag anomalies and send alerts to inspection personnel and management when events of concern to public health occur or when inspections aren't carried out as intended.
Gafney says FSIS has been working with Science Applications International Co. to build PHIS. Developers on the project have delivered the four main components and these are each being tested.
FSIS will manage and maintain the system, and is working closely with agencies such as the USDA's Agricultural Research Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to integrate their data sources into PHIS and provide them with use of PHIS, Gafney says. The data integration will allow FSIS and CDC to more effectively conduct processes such as outbreak investigations.
FSIS is also making PHIS available to state inspection programs, to help them carry out inspection activities. Initially, FSIS personnel at headquarters and in the field will have access to PHIS, followed by the states and other government agencies.
