The pandemic exposed a number of issues in how health and regulatory agencies access and share data in support of public health. Under emergency measures, government agencies were granted new authorities to expand data sharing throughout the public health domain. While many of those expired with the lifting of the public health emergency orders in May of 2023, new efforts have been launched to create a long-term environment for easier data sharing.
Sharing health data across agencies, providers, and other entities paints a more complete health picture for patient care. If a doctor in an ER in California is able to see the full health history of a patient visiting from Montana, they can better diagnose and treat health issues. But to get to that point, data sharing has to start locally, creating an infrastructure for national health networks.
State Health Exchanges
Today, states across the country have implemented health data exchanges designed to make every patient’s health records available at the click of a button for any physician or specialist. In this capacity, a health data exchange acts like a public utility, providing a pipeline for needed resources such as health data.
The development of these Health Information Exchanges (HIE) was largely funded by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009. That act provided $35 billion to support nationwide health IT expansion with $2.4 billion targeting efforts to advance HIE capabilities.
Nevertheless, the funding was depleted by 2021, leaving many states grappling with how to sustain the development and maintenance of HIEs. A wide variety of business models are being tested, many relying on charging providers to use HIE, straining the budgets of smaller, rural practices. Discussion remains on how to federally support these programs to ensure healthcare equity.
Standards and Interoperability
A major obstacle to data sharing and innovation in health IT is the lack of interoperability between systems. Data is organized and classified differently on almost every system, making it difficult to import and compare related data sets.
A Government Accountability Office report found that this lack of standards impeded data sharing during the response to COVID-19. In fact, the report highlights how health officials across the country had to manually input data into numerous systems in the early stages of the pandemic due to the lack of IT system interoperability.
Standards Development
Government and private industry are working to create the much-needed standards to drive interoperability goals forward. The CDC published a series of recommendations for improving public health data exchange, including defining the minimal data necessary for core public health services, establishing public health data systems standards and certification, and establishing frameworks and agreements for the use of public health data.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a new data management and data sharing policy to make research data more broadly accessible by expanding data sharing processes and improving data interoperability across the 27 NIH institutes. The 27 entities are a microcosm of the larger health system, each with their own unique privacy and security requirements. Being able to resolve sharing among these agencies can inform the creation of standards for broader use.
Interoperability Innovation
Outside of government, the Interoperability Institute (IOI), a nonprofit organization, launched Interop.WORLD, a virtual innovation center with a common business architecture for sharing health data. This center will host a series of challenges fostering health information solutions that streamline the process of getting electronic patient consent, sharing maternal health data, promoting health equity, and training the next generation of healthcare workers.
GovWhitePapers and GovEvents have a variety of resources to help agencies and the private sector alike navigate the way to health information interoperability.
- Lasting benefits of Telehealth (white paper) – This publication discusses four top trends impacting the continued use of telehealth, including equitable access to care, empowering of patients, support needed for providers, and a holistic approach to digital versus in-person care.
- Snapshot: How the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is Building a Healthier America (white paper) – This report provides a snapshot of key U.S. Department of Health and Human Services accomplishments from the past year that support the health and well-being of everyone living in America.
- VA Health Care: Improved Data, Planning, and Communication Needed for Infrastructure Modernization and Realignment (white paper) – The Government Accountability Office analyzed the VA’s recommendations for modernizing and realigning its infrastructure and reviewed supporting data and documentation. This data included actual and projected data on demographics and demand for health care.
- Health IT Summit (September 21, 2023; Bethesda, MD) – Federal leaders discuss modernization initiatives around electronic health records (EHRs), equity, interoperability, data management and more.
- HLTH 2023 (October 8-11, 2023; Las Vegas, NV) – Senior executives, decision makers, and innovators across the healthcare spectrum will discuss how to accelerate business outcomes and provide insight to stay ahead of emerging trends.
- APHA 2023 Annual Meeting and Expo (November 12-15, 2023; Atlanta, GA) – This public health focused conference will address the social and ethical challenges that threaten our nation’s health. With a stronger public health infrastructure, we can expand essential prevention and health promotion efforts at the community, state and federal levels to tackle threats from communicable diseases like COVID-19 and mpox, substance misuse, climate change, and health disparities.
Access these resources and more on GovWhitePapers and GovEvents to stay up-to-date on health information interoperability efforts.
