AWS Case Study: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) mission is to improve public health. With the organization's BioSense 2.0 program, the CDC is tasked with providing awareness for all health-related threats and to support responses to these threats at the national, state, and local level. Needing to avoid purchasing expensive hardware and software, the organization turned to AWS for its low cost, pay-per-use model, high availability, as well as security and compliance practices.

The CDC now runs a variety of applications on the AWS Cloud including those that collect patient emergency room visits, laboratory results, and pharmacy prescription sales. With AWS, the CDC has an IT environment that allows data sharing among jurisdictions, development and support of shared analytical capabilities, shared program governance by key stakeholders, and the use of a cloud computing technology to help revolutionize the way that public health surveillance is conducted.