I covered the article: “Is a Western Regional Health Information Exchange on the Horizon?” written by Christopher Jason on October 8th, 2020. This article can be found at https://ehrintelligence.com/news/is-a-western-regional-health-information-exchange-on-the-horizon.
Summary
This article discusses the possibility of a regional health information exchange (HIE) being formed. Most HIE covers only a single state, but this one is considering covering two states, to begin with, Colorado and Arizona. When COVID-19 became an epidemic, the CEO of the Colorado Regional Health Information Organization began to consider teaming up with other states’ HIE to gain a broader picture of the health-related patterns. The first state to agree to talks of a regional model was Health Current, an Arizona HIE. The first discussions between the two states’ HIE programs included what they had in common. Because the states border each other, they found that they share populations, services, needs, and missions. Both states also agree that this pandemic has brought light to the need to use HIE programs to support public health and surveillance. In order to create a regional model, the two programs would have to use similar technologies and products. Eventually, the two states’ HIEs will merge onto a single technological platform. For now, the two programs are collecting similar information so it can be shared and compared easily between programs. While developing this program, they are also keeping in mind ways to make it easy for other HIEs to join them on their platform. In the US, many of the HIEs all have the same goals but go about reaching those goals in different ways, which would make a quick connection difficult.
Assessment of Public Health Findings
As a public health epidemiologist, I believe connecting HIE platforms offers a long list of public health benefits. It can give a better picture of health-related issues in a geographical region. For example, there could be an increase in salmonella cases in a geographical region. Normally, there may not be enough cases to trigger a public health investigation or public health may not be looking at their salmonella cases when a neighboring area is. With a regional HIE, these salmonella cases may be caught earlier and lead to an outbreak investigation that leads to fewer cases in the future. From a Chief Information Officer perspective, a regional platform may be great when it is all completed due to all states having the same program. Honestly, though, to get all the areas onto the regional platform could prove to be extremely difficult. Starting with the question of “whose platform is the best and whose do we keep as the base?” and then how do you force all the other areas to adjust their platforms.