“As part of HHS’s response to President Biden’s Executive Order on Ensuring a Data-Driven Response to COVID-19 and Future High-Consequence Public Health Threats, ONC’s Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) recently held an expert panel hearing to understand the performance of public health data systems during the COVID-19 pandemic response and other gap areas in current infrastructure.”
“The HITAC members heard from a variety of experts to further inform the work of the Public Health Data Systems Task Force. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Deputy Director for Public Health Science and Surveillance Dan Jernigan provided remarks and noted that in addition to gathering information for short-term needs related to pandemic relief efforts, the CDC is preparing a long-lasting, sustainable approach to improve public health data systems.”
“Forthcoming recommendations from the Public Health Data Systems Task Force will identify and prioritize policy and technical gaps to be addressed in order to help ensure a more effective response to future public health threats. These recommendations are expected to be issued later this summer.”
Taking a Holistic Approach to Public Health Data Systems
“Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives (and former CDC director), opened the ‘big picture’ discussion about where things went wrong with the pandemic response. He addressed the pre-existing weaknesses throughout the public health ecosystem and gaps in the sharing of important data between federal, state, and local public health departments. He stated that the essence of an effective response is to learn, adjust, and adapt as we go along. Since, ‘we are less used to the kind of urgency that communicable disease control requires of us in public health,’ Dr. Frieden said that everyone on every level needs to work in concert to move the country forward to be better positioned to address future needs…” Read the full article here.
Source: Public Health Data Systems Hearing: Ensuring a Data-Driven Response to COVID-19 – By Aaron Miri and Denise Webb, July 1, 2021. Health IT Buzz.
