April 05, 2004

By: Mandy McDeau
Website: http://www.1st-in-wellness.com

Experts highlight need to support innovative electronic public health surveillance networks

Today at an eHealth Initiative briefing held in the United States Capitol, leading public and private sector experts highlighted the need to support the power and promise of innovative, real-time public health information networks that will drive connectivity and the sharing of data of public health importance amongst public health agencies and health care providers. eHI is an organization of more than 80 health care organizations whose mission is to drive improvement in the quality, safety, and cost-effectiveness of health care through information technology.

Briefing panelists included Bevan Baker of the City of Milwaukee Department of Public Health; Floyd Eisenberg, MD of Siemens Corporation, Joel Greenspan, MD, MPH for Quintiles Transnational Corp.; Janet Marchibroda of eHealth Initiative and the Foundation for eHealth; Ned McCulloch of IBM Corporation; Jack North of Cerner Corporation; and Michael Wagner, MD, PhD of the Center for Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh.

Through remarks and live public health surveillance technology demonstrations, panelists shared the following:

*Trailblazing achievements in the area of electronic public health surveillance demonstrated by the City of Milwaukee Department of Public Health’s Center for Emergency Public Health Preparedness Initiative.

Live demonstrations of public health surveillance technology to support the transmission of critically important data to public health agencies, including:

*Regional public health surveillance projects in Utah and Pennsylvania developed by the RODS Laboratory of the Center for Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh and Siemens Corporation;

*An outbreak detection network implemented by Cerner Corporation for the Kansas City Public Health Department;

*New opportunities for public health surveillance - leveraging Quintiles existing data warehouse capabilities and use of de-identified health claims data on over 150 million patients for public health surveillance at national, state and local levels.

*Overview of the work of the Public-Private Sector Collaboration to Improve Public Health and Health Care Quality, made up of federal agencies such as CDC and CMS, state and local public health partners, providers, national standards organizations, and health care technology organizations, which is now developing national standards and strategies to transmit data from existing health care information systems and other data sources to support public health, and at the same time, laying the foundation for a national health information infrastructure.

Janet M. Marchibroda, eHI’s chief executive officer, said, our organization believes that the technologies and approaches demonstrated here today, as well as the Foundation for eHealth’s Public-Private Sector Partnership to Improve Public Health and Health Care Quality, are vital in efforts to bolster the Nation’s public health system. They are also key building blocks in the move towards increased system interoperability and data standardization, which will pave the way for the creation of a national health information infrastructure.

Bevan K. Baker, health care operations director at the City of Milwaukee’s Department of Health, emphasized that given the significant associated benefits, efforts to build and enhance electronic public health surveillance systems must receive more federal funding. He said Congressional allocation of more health care dollars for this purpose is particularly important as states and localities strive to bolster their public health infrastructure in the face of competing priorities and budgetary pressures. Our success in Milwaukee is tangible proof that the promise of electronic public health communications is real and can be replicated in cities and states throughout America.

About The Author:

Mandy McDeau is a successful author and regular contributor to http://www.1st-in-wellness.com.  Obtaining and keeping good health through healthy living, natural healing, great mental health and healthy finances.