The ancient Sumerians kept written records of harvest, taxes, beer recipes and sporting matches on clay tablets over 5,000 years ago. Those mysterious and magical looking writings merely contained data about public life. Evidence of advanced data storage is seen in written paper records, the printing press, punch cards, magnetic tapes, cassette tapes, hard drives, Floppy discs, compact discs, SD card, USB flash drive and now the cloud.
Public Health data collection and communication proved to be crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal government has announced a $255 million program to improve public health agency’s ability to improve in this area.
The pandemic uncovered many areas in public health that needed improvement. Some state and local public health agencies are still using faxes and manual entry for data systems. The new Data Modernization Implementation Center program will update state, local and tribal government data systems by offering technical assistance, policy and legal advice, guidance documents and other resources. The monies are made available through the CDC with the goal of developing strong, secure data exchanges between public health agencies.
Several agencies are partnering to oversee the program and have selected three organizations to serve as program centers: CRISP Shared Services, a regional health information exchange; Guidehouse, a consulting firm; and Mathematica, a policy research firm.
The goal is for “modern technology to have more seamless, real-time and higher quality” data sharing among health agencies, private health sector and laboratories. State and local health agencies will be assisted in developing systems that support immediate case reporting and data exchange between health care facilities and public health agencies.
Jennifer Layden, director of CDC’s office of Public Health Data Surveillance and Technology, states, “Public health has a responsibility to detect health threats or diseases that warrant immediate action to identify outbreaks and then work to investigate and shut down that outbreak and that relies on timely data.”
Information for public health agencies to apply for this program will be available soon. Agencies need to express an interest, state desired outcome and needs and report previous efforts taken. The program hopes to “meet health departments where they are at and really evolve with them.”
Experiencing the pandemic working in the emergency department and with our city Health Department, I saw firsthand the difficulties and delay in getting data from the hospital to the Health Department. I knew roughly how many COVID-positive patients we were seeing. That data was not immediately available to the city Health Department. The two institutions are about two tenths of a mile away, yet official data travels through the Massachusetts Virtual Epidemiololgic Network and then back to the Health Department.
Amidst the chaos and uncertainty of the pandemic, data collection and communication felt like ancient cuneiform writing on clay tablets. Moving to the future, we need to assure we are well connected and utilize every resource available.
Take care of yourself and someone else.
Juanita Carnes is a Westfield resident and a nurse practitioner with 38 years of experience in a hospital emergency department and urgent care facilities. She served 30 years on the Westfield Board of Health.
