Configuring policies in public health applications

Public health is a complex practice due to the requirements of different jurisdictions. These requirements present a challenging environment in which to develop public health applications; software must be flexible in order to adapt to the complexities of different jurisdictions. One approach is to integrate policy management. Policies that define the rules governing an application can be created, modified, or deleted based on the deployment of that application. This paper describes a software architecture and expert system implementation of a policy manager designed to address jurisdictional requirements in public health applications. We define our policy requirements and policy model, the components of the architecture, and how the architecture has been used to implement our policy manager. Finally, we present examples of how the policy manager has configured policies used in three public health applications.