Health information exchange for public health

The urgent issues of the rapidly rising costs of healthcare, well-publicized opportunities for improvement in quality of care in the United States, and increasing political pressures have coalesced to create the current environment of public and private support for health information technology (HIT) and health information exchange (HIE) at the national, state, and local levels.

Recent threats related to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the West Nile virus, the potential for a pandemic Avian flu, the increasing burdens of chronic diseases such as obesity, heart disease and cancer, and the ongoing threat of bioterrorism underscore the vital significance of disease surveillance and health information interoperability in protecting the public from natural and manmade outbreaks. Also, natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, devastating forest fires or other natural events that have the potential to displace significant amounts of residents, underscore the importance for HIT adoption and interoperability to provide continuing care to citizens, regardless of where their health records were created. As the National Health Information Network (NHIN) matures, public health organizations stand to benefit from maturing HIE.

The creation of robust HIE at local, statewide and federal levels can improve situational awareness and reporting for public health purposes on a state-wide basis through the timely collection, analysis, and evaluation of clinical case information using a state-of-the-art public health HIE service and the emerging standards for the NHIN. To develop mature and robust HIE, public health organizations must develop structured, methodical approaches and methadologies to ensure that buy-in from all stakeholders. Unique value propositions must be developed and communicated to all stakeholders to maximize participation, which ultimately affects the systems sensitivity and specificity in identifying potential outbreaks of disease.