From the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials understood that using data to gather insights from otherwise inert information across the entire health ecosystem would improve public health outcomes, but raising the value of that data requires a lot of work, according to several public health officials.

The pandemic created an instant and widespread need for better data sharing about infections and treatment, pushing states to revolutionize their healthcare IT and address new challenges with cutting-edge technology. For many states, the biggest key to success has been moving to the cloud.

Consumer expectations and needs demand that health data be shared and made easily accessible, according to Karen DeSalvo, the national coordinator for Health Information Technology at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Karen DeSalvo “Consumers are expecting that we share their data and HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] allows it,” DeSalvo said at the […]

Data breaches are costing the health care industry an estimated $6.2 billion, with 89% of organizations represented in a new study by the Ponemon Institute having experienced a data breach in the past two years and 45% reporting more than five breaches in the same time period. The Sixth Annual Benchmark Study on Privacy & […]

Government officials and industry leaders will try to get to the bottom of why interoperability has been so difficult to achieve, they said at the second meeting of the Joint Health IT Policy and Standards Committee Meeting Interoperability Experience Task Force. At the March 23 meeting, Anjum Khurshid, co-chair of the Interoperability Experience Task Force (IX TF), […]

The Federal government is looking for ways to put the hammer down on health care data blockers and data hackers. Karen DeSalvo, National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, told committee members at a March 22 congressional hearing that she has called for funding to “put some teeth around” going after data blockers. Until now, the Federal government […]