The scope of our research included the following aims: (1) the development of a method for evaluating the completeness of laboratory data in the context of public health reporting; (2) measuring the completeness of laboratory data received from clinical information systems and an HIE using the method; and (3) comparing the completeness of the 'raw' data from clinical information systems (e.g., unaltered and unedited ELR messages) with the completeness of 'enhanced' data from the HIE (e.g., ELR messages having syntax corrected and concepts mapped to standard vocabularies).