In an iHealthBeat Special Report, health officials discussed BioSense, a national data collection and analysis system designed to monitor hospital emergency department data to identify and respond to disasters and bioterrorist attacks.
The Special Report includes comments from:
- Jeff Johnson, senior epidemiologist at San Diego's Health and Human Services Agency;
- Dean Lampman, surveillance coordinator for the Southwest Center for Advanced Public Health Practice;
- Leslie Lenert, director of the National Center for Public Health Informatics; and
- Bill Stephens, manager of the Tarrant County Advanced Practice Center in Texas.
Four years into the project, BioSense is capturing data from about 12% of all ED visits in the country. The goal is to increase that percentage to the point that BioSense, "a system of systems," can respond to outbreaks like salmonella that go beyond state borders.
"About two-thirds of the states have some sort of system like this," Lenert said. But "they don't want to let go of their data. They have collected it, they know how to interpret it. ... they do want to collaborate with other public health officials, but they just don't want to lose the stewardship of their data" (Kennedy,
iHealthBeat, 9/5).
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