“The Department of Health and Human Services created a system housing 187 datasets in nine days to support White House Coronavirus Task Force efforts to track and mitigate COVID-19’s spread.”
“Dubbed HHS Protect, the health insight platform pulls data from federal agencies, all 50 states, health care facilities and academia with contributions from private industry.”
“The HHS Office of the Chief Information Officer manages and continues to scale the platform, currently used by about 200 decision-makers and responders, José Arrieta, CIO and interim chief data officer, told FedScoop by email. Dr. Deborah Birx, Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, receives a nightly report on county-level COVID-19 cases nationwide compiled and analyzed in HHS Protect…”
“HHS Protect has an authority to operate at the Federal Information Security Management Act moderate level — housing data that would have a serious adverse impact on agencies or people if compromised.”
“That data includes:
- Multiple COVID-19 case count sources for comprehensive visibility
- Hospital capacity, utilization, inventory and supply from states and territories
- Supply chain data from government and industry
- Diagnostic laboratory testing data
- Census population and demographic statistics
- Community-based testing sites
- State policy actions
- COVID-19 and flu-like emergency department data”
“The White House charged HHS’s OCIO with operating the support systems providing information products to the Coronavirus Task Force, which in turn decides what additional data is needed for understanding the environment and coordinating resources. In essence, the task force is the product owner and HHS OCIO the scrum master and developers, Arrieta said…”The VA’s role in sharing data
“Hospitals are but one component of HHS’s data-gathering efforts. The Department of Veterans Affairs is closely sharing data on normal health care operations and the pandemic from the 1,243 facilities where the Veterans Health Administration has a presence…”
“As a result of the working group, VA is partnering with the Department of Defense, HHS’s National Institutes of Health and private industry on COVID-19 diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and outcome studies.” Read the full article here.
Source: Inside the HHS system informing White House coronavirus decisions – By Dave Nyczepir, April 21, 2020. FedScoop.
