“Bolstering the nation’s public health infrastructure will be a cross-departmental effort in government, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is carving out the role it will play related to data sharing.”
“Speaking at a virtual Health Affairs Policy Spotlight event on Thursday, ONC head Dr. Micky Tripathi said that the agency is working closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to break down the data silos that exist between clinical systems, administrative systems and public health systems…”
“For example, the pandemic made clear that laboratory data standardization is severely lacking across the country, Tripathi said.”
“The CDC had identified two very specific lab codes that labs were supposed to use for Covid tests,” he said. “And what got reported by a number of organizations was that public health systems were receiving 200 different types of lab codes representing Covid because there was no monitoring, no enforcement.”
“Another area that needs to see improvement for true data integration is patient matching…” Read the full article here.
Source: ONC Chief: Data standardization key to integrating public health into info-sharing infrastructure – By Anuja Vaidya, July 5, 2021. MedCity News.
