Addressing climate change continues to be a significant global challenge, and will be a key discussion topic this week at Davos.  However, one area of climate change that is often not covered in the news cycle is how health data interoperability can help mitigate the impact of climate change on the health of citizens.

When a crisis strikes, the health informatics community can optimize data infrastructure to drive interoperability, according to Titus Schleyer of the Center for Biomedical Informatics of the Regenstrief Institute.

Here’s are some examples from this recent EHR Intelligence article: 

• If public health departments knew who was at risk for heat stroke, they could direct resources in a more targeted fashion during heat waves.

• Integrating environmental data with public health data could help health departments mitigate the health impacts of wildfires among vulnerable populations.

• Health informatics could aid in monitoring the migration of diseases due to climate change.

While these seem like very viable use cases for leveraging health data for addressing climate change, there are still the challenges of disconnected data across healthcare systems, public health authorities, and emergency response systems like fire departments, according to the EHR Intelligence article.

Last year, NIH launched a project to build infrastructure for a climate change and health data ecosystem through curation, creation, and evaluation of data sources, methods, tools, and other resources.

In November, the Biden administration launched its “Playbook to Address Social Determinants of Health (SDOH),” which took into account the impact of climate change on the health of citizens. Specifically, it noted that populations experiencing social and economic drivers of poor health outcomes are also at higher risk of exposure to environmental hazards. 

With climate change impacting virtually every aspect of our lives, being able to leverage and share health data is rising up in importance. We imagine this topic will come more into the forefront in 2024.  

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