Here, we compared two approaches to expose data from the French Sentinelles network, an information system focusing on communicable diseases surveillance in the general population. We implemented SDMX-HD (Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange-Health Domain), a standard supported by government agencies to exchange statistical data and OpenData (OData), a general purpose protocol proposed by Microsoft Corp. The same data were described using SDMX-HD (available at ) and using OData ().
These two use cases proved the feasibility of opening public health data on the internet, and highlighted difficulties: SDMX, a full-featured solution, encouraged harmonization and reusability, sustainability, but required complex developments and tools; OData was much simpler to implement but required a ¡°from scratch¡± description and did not encourage reusability. From an end-user perspective, integration in every-day tools is not achieved yet. These two approaches are a first step to interoperability in PHS.