The Animal Health Regulatory Messaging Schema (AHRMS) is a set of standards for the exchange of animal health data between USDA and its partners. This includes cooperative State-Federal efforts, emerging and foreign animal diseases, and other significant regulatory diseases, with the capability to easily expand to cover broader future needs. The schema is based on HL7 v2.8.2 messaging standards and is designed to provide stakeholders with a means to exchange data that will increase the accuracy, timeliness and integrity for program reporting and analysis regardless of the system used and the systems data representation.
The AHRMS schema is used to exchange data related to animal health, including disease surveillance, laboratory testing, and epidemiology. The schema is designed to be flexible and extensible, allowing for the addition of new data elements as needed. Additionally, recognizing the need to integrate field collected data with laboratory results data to provide an epidemiologically complete set of data, this Animal Health Regulatory Messaging Schema (AHRMS) will facilitate that integration with confidence using a standardized data set from the field and the existing results messaging from the laboratories. The message can also provide a means of exchanging important field observations that may not have a diagnostic laboratory testing complement, such as syndromic surveillance, using established standards.
VTS assisted the USDA VS program in the development of the AHRMS, along with the necessary standardized terminology, and will update regularly to reflect changes in data requirements and standards.
For more information about the AHRMS schema, please contact the USDA VS program.