As U.S. states develop strategies for re-opening, while also containing future COVID-19 outbreaks, improved testing and patient health data exchange are rising to the forefront.

To help prepare for the next few months of the pandemic, the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy has convened multi-stakeholder working groups to identify feasible healthcare data interoperability recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Containment strategies across the country depend on effective collaboration of public health authorities with health care providers, laboratories, and community-based organizations to conduct testing, support effective contact tracing, quickly discern new patterns in health care use plausibly related to COVID-19, and identify ways to improve all of these activities over time,” the center noted.

Here are the three steps that the center recommends:

1.    Improve Commercial Lab Reporting

2.    Supplement Case Investigations with Clinical Data

3.    Enhance Use Of The National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP)

“The Federal Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (HHS ONC) and the CDC should convene a joint working group with state, territorial, and local health officials and syndromic surveillance managers to conduct a focused review of the Syndromic Surveillance Messaging Guide and produce updated guidance for COVID-19 related syndromes,” the recommendation stated.

These recommendations reinforce a key topic that was highlighted in a recent RosettaHealth podcast, which is the value of HIT infrastructure in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Doug Fridsma, former President and CEO of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and former Chief Science Officer at ONC; Tim Pletcher, Executive Director of MiHIN; and Buff Colchagoff, CEO, all discussed how HIT infrastructure is helping to share data with front-line care workers at field hospitals and testing facilities – without needing to re-invent new processes, standards and solutions.

Now that states are developing re-opening plans, the HIT infrastructure and health data exchange will continue to play a critical role to helping us get back to a semblance of normal.

To learn more about how RosettaHealth can assist with any health information challenges you might have, book a free consultation with one of our interoperability experts.