A few years ago, I was sitting in my office as an immunization program director, trying to answer a question that should have been easy. I wanted to know what immunization information systems other states and countries were using. Not because I was curious in some abstract way, but because I needed to make real decisions. What functionality should we consider when procuring a new system? What have other programs already solved that we're still struggling with? What options even exist beyond the handful of vendors everyone in the room already knew by name?

I assumed this information was out there somewhere, organized and waiting for me, but it wasn't. What I found instead were scattered fragments: a vendor's marketing page here, a conference presentation from three years ago there, and a colleague's half-remembered comment about a system she'd once seen in another state. I could not find anything that let me actually compare systems side by side, and nothing that told me, with any confidence, which public health agencies around the world were actually running and what those systems could actually do.

That gap stayed with me, and it's the reason we're building this global directory.

Our goal is to build the world's largest public health IT data repository, and I want to be specific about what that means because "data repository" can sound abstract and hide the actual work. We are cataloging the systems that public health agencies use to track disease, manage immunizations, monitor outbreaks, and support the decisions that protect communities. We are not just interested in the big, well-known platforms; we are looking to highlight the full landscape, wherever we can find it and wherever it's being used.

That is what makes this project different from a typical database project. We aren’t just scraping information from the internet and publishing it as fact. We are starting there, yes, but we make it clear what is pending verification and what has recently been verified (and when).

This matters more than it might seem at first because public health IT (PHIT) systems are often built and maintained by small teams who know their product better than any outside observer ever could. A system might look, from the outside, like it only handles immunization records, when in fact it also supports outbreak reporting or interoperates with a dozen other platforms in ways that never made it into a press release. The people running these systems are the only ones who can tell us what's actually happening on the ground, and that is why we ask them. That's what makes this a community-validated global directory rather than just another list assembled from secondhand sources.

I want to be direct about our mission, because it shapes every decision we make about this project. This is being built by public health, for public health. We are public health professionals who got tired of not having the information we needed to do our jobs well, so we're building it ourselves, in the open, with the people who run these systems as our partners rather than our subjects.

That's also why we're asking for your help through public records requests and direct outreach. If you've received a request from us to validate information about a system you manage, this is why. We're not trying to catch anyone doing something wrong or expose anything that should stay private. We're trying to build an accurate, honest picture of the public health IT landscape so that people like the version of me from a few years ago, the immunization director trying to figure out her options, actually have somewhere to look.

Here's what that looks like in practice: anyone can search the PHIT Global Directory (you don’t need a login and there’s nothing to sign up for). If you want the full dataset (who's using what, on which platforms, with which features), you can join for free and download it as a spreadsheet, refreshed monthly, with a unique ID attached so you can always point back to exactly what you used. That's true whether you're a health department employee, a student, a journalist, or someone from the private sector. We are not gatekeeping that information by who you are.

I also want to be upfront about the mechanics behind it, because how something is built shouldn't be a mystery any more than the data itself. The directory lives within a platform built and maintained by Seagan, Inc., my own research and consulting firm, which makes this project possible and keeps it funded. We've embedded it directly into this site so it's easy to find in one place, but if you ever open it in its own window, you'll see it living on Seagan's platform. That's intentional. We'd rather you know exactly whose infrastructure you're looking at than find out later and wonder why we didn't say it up front.

If you need something beyond the free monthly download (faster updates, live access, or bulk pulls), that's available too, but it's sold separately through Seagan, Inc., not through Public Health IT (PHIT). The same is true of procurement and mandate data, which is a different kind of information entirely and is never part of the free directory. Public Health IT (PHIT) itself doesn't sell any data. That's intentional because this is the reason we built this platform, and we intend to keep it that way.

I've learned over nearly two decades in this field that public health data affects more people than most realize, and it affects each of them differently. So it's worth being clear about who we're building this for, because we're serving a few different audiences at once, and we don't want to blur them together.

If you're a member of the general public, this project exists for you in the fullest sense. You are the reason any of this matters. The systems we're cataloging are the ones that track outbreaks in your community, manage your kids' vaccine records, and inform decisions that affect your health, whether you ever think about them or not. We're not asking anything of you here beyond knowing that this data is here for you when you need it. Making sure you understand how these systems work and why they deserve your attention is part of our core mission and guides how we present information to you.

If you work in public health, whether you're managing an immunization program like I once did, running a surveillance system, or leading IT for a health department, this global directory is meant to answer the questions I couldn't answer for myself. What is everyone else doing? What's out there that I haven't considered? How do the systems in my state or country compare to what's being used elsewhere, and what can I learn from that? The full dataset is free to you, as it is to anyone else, because that information should belong to the field and not be locked behind a paywall.

If you're a vendor, consultant, or researcher, the free monthly dataset is available to you too, on the same terms as everyone else. Where your needs differ are speed and depth: market data that updates faster than once a month, or procurement and mandate data that go beyond what's in the public directory. That's a different product, built and sold separately, and we're upfront about that rather than pretending it's all the same thing.

If you're reading this because you received a request from us, here is what I'd ask you to know. This project only works if the people who actually run these systems are willing to tell us what's true. We could publish what we find on the internet and call it done, but that would leave you living with an inaccurate public record of the work you've built, and it would leave everyone else relying on information that might be wrong in ways only you could catch.

So we're asking you to review what we've gathered and correct anything we've gotten wrong. This is not a sales pitch, and it's not a data harvesting exercise dressed up as outreach. It's an invitation to ensure the record is accurate, from someone who has spent her career on the other side of this exact problem and wishes this global directory had already existed.

If you've ever tried to answer the question I was asking all those years ago, “what's out there, and what are my real options,” I hope this becomes the place you find that answer. And if you're one of the people helping us get the details right, thank you. This global directory is only as good as what we learn from the people who build these systems in the first place.