What You Should Know:
– The ONC today unveiled a series of investments to improve
the sharing of health information related to vaccination.
– The new investments will provide opportunities to track
vaccination progress, help clinicians contact high-risk patients, and help
identify patients due to receive the second dose of the vaccine.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
acting through the Office of the National
Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) today announced a
series of investments to help increase data sharing between health information
exchanges (HIEs) and immunization information systems. These
projects will build on and expand ONC’s Strengthening the Technical Advancement
and Readiness of Public Health Agencies via Health Information Exchange (STAR
HIE) Program by helping communities improve the sharing of health information
related to vaccinations. Through these collaborations, public health agencies
can get additional help tracking and identifying patients who have yet to
receive their second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and better identify those who
may be high-risk who have not yet received a vaccination.
In addition, ONC will also award funds to the Association of
State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and CORHIO, the Colorado
Regional Health Information Organization, to support immunization related
health information exchange collaborations.
“These CARES Act funds will allow clinicians to better access information about their patients from their community immunization registries by using the resources of their local health information exchanges,” said Don Rucker, MD, national coordinator for health information technology. “Through these collaborative efforts public health agencies and clinicians will be better equipped to more effectively administer immunizations to at-risk patients, understand adverse events, and better track long-term health outcomes as more Americans are vaccinated.”
Tracking Vaccination Progress
The new investments will provide opportunities to track vaccination progress, help clinicians contact high-risk patients, and help identify patients due to receive the second dose of the vaccine. It will also help provide a statistically and clinically robust way to measure vaccination outcomes. In collaboration with HIEs, the ability to individually correlate every patient who has received the vaccine with all of their clinical data both pre-and post-vaccination could offer more detailed insight into any adverse events and long-term health outcomes than is currently possible.
Increasing Data Collaboration Between HIEs & Immunization
Registries
There are currently 63 immunization information systems
across the United States, one in each state, eight in territories, and in five
cities. They are funded in part by through the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD).
Currently, there are approximately 100 health information exchange
organizations in the United States reaching an estimated 92 percent of the U.S.
population, according to the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative,
the national trade association for HIEs.
