Addressing COVID-19 Public Health Data Interoperability Gaps
The ONC’s Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) recently held an expert panel hearing to understand the performance of public health data systems during the COVID-19 pandemic response and other gap areas in current infrastructure.
While the global pandemic certainly has created a tipping point movement where health data sharing efforts rapidly advanced, there were still gaps and areas of improvement, which can be addressed in today’s relatively post-pandemic environment.
During the hearing, Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives and former CDC director, discussed how weaknesses in the public health ecosystem, including interoperability gaps between federal, state, and local public health departments, need to be addressed for future public health disasters.
Experts on the panel also discussed how industry members must build systems that can be ramped up to seamlessly meet the needs of public health emergencies to close potential health data interoperability gaps.
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, RosettaHealth hosted a podcast interview with 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 of RosettaHealth, about the role of health IT infrastructure for the COVID-19 response.
The interview highlighted how Health IT infrastructure played a key role in 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.
And, there are innovations that enhance the HIT infrastructure for true health data exchange. RosettaHealth's HealthBus is a SaaS-based solution that enables full health information exchange capabilities for sending and receiving all standardized exchange formats. It also offers real-time network analytics capabilities, which include detailed connection status as well as metrics and logs about each facility, feed or protocol.
As we look back on lessons-learned from the pandemic, now is the ideal time to consider new and innovative ways to strengthen HIT infrastructure with comprehensive health data exchange solutions.
RosettaHealth can assist with any health information challenges you might have, book a free consultation with one of our interoperability experts.