Public healthInformation sharing seen as public health "game changer"

Published 13 April 2011

Public health officials are pushing for the creation of shared databases that contain electronic health records (EHRs) to help combat infectious diseases and stop epidemics; a CDC official pointed to the positive impact that electronic health information exchanges (HIE) have on public health; during the 2003 SARS outbreak, Milwaukee helped establish a four-state network that automatically detected new cases of SARS based on electronic reports from local hospital emergency rooms; manual reporting of test results is a slow process, but with the use of electronic reporting public health officials can now quickly identify epidemics and pandemics as they occur

Information sharing changed the outcome with H1N1 // Source: oxfamamerica.org

Public health officials are pushing for the creation of shared databases that contain electronic health records (EHRs) to help combat infectious diseases and stop epidemics.

Speaking earlier this month at the Health Technology Transformation’s summit in Atlanta, Dr. Seth Foldy, the director of the public health informatics and technology program office at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), explained the positive impact that electronic health information exchanges (HIE) have on public health. As evidence, Foldy pointed to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic that resulted in the largest mass vaccination campaign in U.S. history.

He said that online immunization registries allowed public health officials to track administration of the vaccine and work with insurance companies to identify and contact individuals at high risk who had not received their shot.

In 2003, Foldy, who was then the commissioner of Milwaukee’s health department, established a four-state system designed to detect for SARS. The network relied on electronic reports from local hospital emergency departments to track and detect patients admitted with symptoms that resembled SARS.

He said that these two instances demonstrated the “transformative” capabilities of electronic reporting of laboratory data.

We know that this is a game changer in terms of electronic reports about communicable disease,” he said.

The whole point of informatics is to add value. Public health has one of the best use cases in the world for sharing health information.”

He explained that manual reporting of test results is a slow process, but with the use of electronic reporting public health officials can now quickly identify epidemics and pandemics as they occur.

Foldy said “Public health agencies, from local to state to federal, have been building information technology for years, but because we don’t have a lot of connections to y’all, we don’t have a lot of information to share.”

Eventually, he hopes that the databases will become more widespread and interconnected.

In the future, we assume that most of our public health allies will be perched in front of their EHRs.”