public health surveillance

See the following -

Payam Etminani

Payam Etminani is the CEO and Co-Founder of Bitscopic. Etminani co-founded Bitscopic after a colleague, friend and mentor at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), John Lopez, contracted a hospital acquired infection at a VA hospital. Read More »

Ready or Not: New Report on Protecting the Public's Health

The Trust for America's Health (TFAH) released its 2019 edition of what it hopes will be an annual report, Ready or Not: Protecting the Public's Health from Diseases, Disasters and Bioterrorism last February. The ground-breaking report warns about key global challenges ahead, like the risk of a flu pandemic; the impact of weather pattern changes due to climate change; the dangers of antimicrobial resistance, and others, and tries to offer advice on how to prepare for them.

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The ONC 10 Year Vision

On June 5th 2014, ONC released  “Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: a 10-Year Vision to Achieve an Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure." The plan is divided in 3 year goals, 6 year goals, and 10 year goals. Five specific tactics support the strategies. Below is a summary of the report and a few comments from my Massachusetts experience that support the reasonableness of the ONC goals.

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Two New Federal Reports Released That Have Major Public Health Impacts

Two new Federal reports were recently released that have a public health impact. First, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released its 2022 Report to Congress: Update on Access, Exchange, and Use of Electronic Health Information. This report covers the current state of adoption of health information technology and access to electronic health information guided largely by the requirements of the 2016 21st Century Cures Act. The report observes that, “Although tremendous progress has been made with EHRs that capture and support the use of health information about individuals, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed gaps in health IT systems that support capturing and using population data. The challenges exposed during the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic pinpointed the importance of health IT to monitor population health regarding public health surveillance of testing, diagnosis, and vaccine distribution.”

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US Senate Releases Draft Future Pandemic Preparedness Plan - Asks for Feedback

On June 10, 2020 the US Senate released a white paper titled "Preparing for the Next Pandemic" under the signature of Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. The white paper has five recommendations to address future pandemics based on lessons learned from COVID-19 and the past 20 years of pandemic planning. "The five recommendations...along with a series of questions at the end of this white paper, are intended to elicit recommendations that Congress can consider and act on this year," Senator Alexander said in a statement, adding that "I am inviting comments, responses, and any additional recommendations for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions to consider. This feedback will be shared with my colleagues, both Democrat and Republican." This feedback from the public will be accepted until June 26, 2020... Read More »

VA Selects Bitscopic's Praedico for Public Health Surveillance

Press Release | Bitscopic | March 20, 2015

Bitscopic Inc., a leading provider of health analytics tools, announced today that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has selected its Praedico platform to detect and monitor infectious disease outbreaks across the country. In addition, the VA is going to pilot Bitscopic's advanced analytics software for the early detection and management of hospital acquired infections (HAI) and other clinical informatics applications. Bitscopic's Praedico scans data from electronic health records (EHRs), laboratories, pharmacies, and other sources in seconds. It has been used to analyze infectious disease data including influenza, dengue, Hepatitis C (HCV), etc. Praedico is a modular, highly configurable, and customizable platform. It can detect and monitor large-scale events such as antibiotic resistance trends and potential major disease outbreaks. In addition, it monitors more localized events and tools, such as patient monitoring devices, and surgical site infections. Read More »