The Maryland Electronic Vital Records Registration System (MDEVRRS)

Program Description

The University of California has been a leader in national efforts to use electronic systems to re-engineer vital records infrastructure in the United States.  In 1980, Dr. Ron Williams’ (UC Santa Barbara) team implemented the Automated Vital Statistics System (AVSS), the world’s first electronic birth registration system (EBRS).  In 2005, under a collaborative agreement with the California Department of Public Health, Dr. Michael Hogarth ‘s (UC Davis) team implemented one of the first electronic death registration systems in the US, the California Death Registration System (CA-EDRS).   Since then, Dr. Hogarth’s team (UCSD) has worked to integrate, and update California’s registration systems. Today, the California Integrated Vital Records System (Cal-IVRS) is used by California’s 61 public health jurisdictions to collect data and register 245,000 death certificates, 5,000 fetal death certificates, and 500,000 birth certificates annually.   In 2022, Cal-IVRS manage data and registered one out of ten vital events in the US. 

To foster wider adoption of electronic vital records systems, UC, under the direction of Dr. Hogarth, facilitated sharing of technical assets with other States.  Through this process, UC assisted Maryland Department of Health (MDH) in implementing its first electronic death registration system (MD-EDRS), which was deployed January 1, 2015.   Maryland subsequently decided to also replace its aging electronic birth registration system with one designed like the California EBRS system and to enhance their vital records reporting with the UC-developed Vital Records Business Intelligence System (VRBIS). 

Since 2019, UC has worked with Maryland to build its new birth registration system, migrate 80 years of legacy birth data into the new system, implement a Maryland version of VRBIS, integrate the components, and deploy them in a modern secure cloud (Maryland MD-THINK).  The MD-EBRS and MD-VRBIS systems have a planned deployment date of May 2023.  

MD-EBRS Application overview: 

Electronic birth registration, eliminates the reliance on paper and the transfer of paper forms, drastically improving the efficiency of the birth registration process. The system also enables birth data reporting to occur in near real-time. The following are essential features and functions of MDEBRS:  

• Accessible securely via web browser  
• Supports public health birth registration workflow for multiple birth types: 
  ♦  Hospital  
  ♦  Local Health Department 
  ♦  Home Births 
  ♦  Foundling 
  ♦  Delayed Birth 
  ♦  Legacy (paper records with an existing SFN) 
• User friendly data entry with edits to enhance data quality  
• Smart behavior drop downs, reference browsers and text fields  
• Ensures data integrity through custom validations 
• Features file attachment capability to attach supporting documentation to records 
• Allows entry of record notes  
• Supports amendments on certificates dating back to the 1930’s 
• Electronic transmission of original and amended birth record to the state department   
• Generates unofficial PDF Hospital copy of Certificate  
• Supports the generation of: 
  ♦  Maryland’s official birth certificate 
  ♦  Operational reports to understand turnaround time across jurisdictions and hospitals  
  ♦  IJE file generation for transmittal to NCHS  
  ♦  EAB file generation for transmittal to the Social Security Administration   

 The new Maryland suite of integrated systems customized for Maryland derived from the Cal-IVRS code base, will be known as the Maryland Electronic Vital Records Registration System (MDEVRRS) and will include: 

• MDEDRS (Maryland Electronic Death Registration System) 
• MDEBRS (Maryland Electronic Birth Registration System) 
• MDVRBIS (Maryland Vital Registration Business Intelligence System) 
• MDFDRS (Maryland Electronic Fetal Death Registration System)  

All systems are deployed in the MD-THINK cloud (an Amazon Web Services secure environment). 

Principal Investigators (PI):  Michael Hogarth, MD

 UCSD Staff: Angelina Cordaro, Adrianne Agsolid, Robin Anderson 

Start Date: October 2019           

Expected End Date: October 2023