State and local health departments have made significant progress in being able to respond to public health threats, largely because of expanding communications networks and health information exchanges, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a report released Feb. 20.
In the report, the CDC assessed efforts to improve public health preparedness since 2002, when Congress authorized federal funding for the Public Health Emergency Preparedness cooperative agreement. To date, that program has distributed more than $5 billion to assist states in preparing for disease outbreaks, bioterrorism and natural disasters.
Improved communication and data sharing among health officials proved to be a determining factor in states’ response to public health issues, according to the report. The number of users on the Epidemic Information Exchange (Epi-X) – the CDC’s secure, web-based network – increased from 890 in 2001 to 4,646 users in 2006. Epi-X provides notification, support and coordination of public health efforts to designated officials.
All states can also receive urgent reports on disease at all times – an increase from 12 states in 1999. Before electronic transmission of these reports, clinicians were often unable to contact a public health official after work hours.
In addition, the report noted that all states are currently participating in the Health Alert Network, which links local health departments to hospitals, the CDC, and state health departments.
“CDC’s Health Alert Network (HAN) and state-level HANs provide a mechanism for users, including state and local public health departments, hospitals, and physicians to rapidly exchange critical public health information,” the report sxaid. “The number of states responding to a test HAN message from CDC in 30 minutes or less has increased by 48 percent since 20003.”
The CDC highlighted several recent public health responses that illustrate improved levels of communication, including the 2006 E. coli outbreak. After health officials identified prepackaged spinach as the likely source of the bacteria, the agency used HAN and Epi-X to send alerts to state and local officials. At the same time, state-run laboratories used PulseNet – a network of laboratories coordinated by the CDC – to compare strains of E. coli and determine which states were part of the outbreak.
Despite advancements, disease surveillance still lags far behind where it needs to be, the CDC said. Sixteen states reported no plan to electronically exchange health data with regional health information organizations (RHIOs), and emergency communication systems lack necessary levels of interoperability.
“Multiple agencies can work together more effectively during an emergency if all communications systems can ‘talk’ to each other,” the CDC said. “In 2007, DHS reported that many cities and metropolitan areas have established multiagency communications, but more progress is needed to expand interoperable communication across jurisdictions and levels of government.”
The CDC said it plans to expand the use of electronic health information and establish uniform standards for seamless data exchange across networks.
From the battlefield to the home front: Managing medical data
Government Health IT presents Col. Claude Hines Jr., program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, in this recent InSight eSeminar. Col. Hines discusses the health information technology and tactical challenges faced by the military medical community in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. In doing so, he describes the current information technology solutions for transferring clinical data between battlefield care givers to health care personnel at military treatment facilities worldwide.
