Health IT obviously should be part of public health surveillance efforts because epidemiology relies so heavily on data. With this in mind, the federal Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (Opens in a new window) has published a new infographic explaining the use of health IT in syndromic surveillance and electronic public health reporting.
Some of the numbers are impressive. Thanks in no small part to the Meaningful Use (Opens in a new window) incentive program for electronic health records — something ONC certainly wants to promote — the volume of laboratory results available for electronic reporting to public health agencies has soared since 2011.
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There certainly is a long way to go, however. While upwards of 1,500 hospitals are sending syndromic surveillance data electronically to public health agencies, that is barely a quarter of the nearly 5,700 U.S. hospitals in operation, according to American Hospital Association data (Opens in a new window).
Image: Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology