When the COVID-19 pandemic first took hold two years ago, a spotlight was immediately shown on the need or enhancing the public health data infrastructure.

During this time, we hosted a RosettaHealth 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.

The interview discussed how the role of health IT infrastructure has never been more important. To be able to make policies, understand how to treat the virus, and coordinate care, this infrastructure is serving as the foundational guide for driving a more-effective response – whether during or after the pandemic.

Along these lines, HIMSS recently published a report recommending an investment of $36.7 billion over 10 years to modernize State, Territorial, Local and Tribal (STLT). The report also called for $25.6 billion for immediate STLT public health data infrastructure and $11 billion for public health interoperability and sustainability.

“The proposed 10-year, $36.7 billion investment to strengthen our public health information infrastructure ensures our ability to produce more meaningful data yielded by secure, interoperable, integrated systems supporting public health officials, healthcare agencies and policymakers in making informed decisions to rapidly respond to health threats arising from resistant infectious diseases as well as the impacts from global climate shifts and natural disasters,” said Valerie Rogers, director of government relations for HIMSS.

In the meantime, there are innovations that enhance the HIT infrastructure for true health data exchange.

For example, 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.

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