Health & Saf. Code, § 131365

(a) (1) The department may develop and administer a syndromic surveillance program.

(2) The purpose of this chapter is to authorize the department to collect public health and medical data in near real time to detect and investigate changes in the occurrence of disease in the population, especially as a result of a disease outbreak or other public health emergency, disaster, or special event and to support responses to emerging public health threats and conditions impacting the health of California residents.

(3) Upon implementation of this chapter, the department shall assign a name to the program.

(b) Subject to an appropriation for this purpose, the department may designate an existing syndromic surveillance system or create a new syndromic surveillance system in order to facilitate the reporting of electronic health data by specified entities pursuant to Section 131370.

(c) The syndromic surveillance system created or designated by the department pursuant to subdivision (b) shall, at a minimum, provide local health departments access to and use of a secure, integrated electronic health system with standardized analytic tools and processes to rapidly collect, evaluate, share, and store syndromic surveillance data.

(d) (1) The list of data elements, electronic transmission standards, data transmission schedule, and instructions pertaining to the program may be modified at any time by the department.

(2) The department shall collaborate with local health departments to determine modifications to be made pursuant to this subdivision.

(3) Modifications made pursuant to this subdivision shall be exempt from the administrative regulation and rulemaking requirements of Chapter 3.5 (commencing with Section 11340) of Part 1 of Division 3 of Title 2 of the Government Code and shall be implemented without being adopted as a regulation, except that the revisions shall be filed with the Secretary of State and printed and published in Title 17 of the California Code of Regulations.