"We have made great advancements over the last five to 10 years," said Hamaker, who is the NEDSS Coordinator for the Texas Department of State Health Services. "But there's always going to be room for improvement. There will always be new technologies and new capabilities. Am I satisfied where we are? I'm impressed in relationship to where we've come."

Texas and the other 15 other states on NEDSS use a product called Orion Health Rhapsody Integration Engine from , which normalizes the data coming in from health facilities for use in regional and state systems then feeds it through the NEDSS system to the CDC.

That's the same system a hospital will use to accept data from various departments, normalize it and make it accessible in a patient's electronic health record.

While the U.S. has moved forward with new health data surveillance systems, other countries such as Mexico, don't have systems that are as sophisticated. Without accurate reporting, epidemics can spread unchecked, even if some cases are reported up the government chain.

"We do have a lot of concern about Mexican disease surveillance -- especially in a country that doesn't have some of the penetration of high technology surveillance systems that the U.S. has," Danos said.