“The Department of Health and Human Services changed the way it conducts business so it could rapidly develop its system for providing a common operating picture on the coronavirus pandemic.”
“HHS Protect launched April 10 and currently collects more than 200 data sets from every state and territory, 6,146 hospitals, commercial and public health labs, and 80% of private hospital labs.”
“Rather than standardizing 3.5 billion data elements, HHS took a flexible approach, creating multiple avenues for receiving data using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies, said Chief Information Officer José Arrieta.”
“’Saying that everybody is going to jump on a single platform is insane,’ Arrieta said on an AFCEA Bethesda webinar Tuesday. ‘It’s never going to happen, especially when you’re delivering a capability that’s touching the entirety of the United States.'”
“Hospitals are at different levels technologically, and customizing a single platform to integrate their legacy systems would have been costly — a problem COTS solutions solved, he said…” Read the full article here.
Source: HHS changed its business model in building the White House coronavirus system – By Dave Nyczepir, June 24, 2020. FedScoop.