“A more modern public-health data system would have improved detection and tracking of the coronavirus as it spread across the country, health officials said.”
“Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told members of a House appropriations subcommittee on March 10 that updating the agency’s core data reporting, analysis and surveillance capabilities to better track emerging health threats is one of their highest budget priorities…”
“Currently, Arias said there is a “delay in finding out what is happening and who it is happening to,” citing “unfortunate barriers that the current systems have with getting that information from health-care providers, from states, that we can use to engage in that response earlier.”
“Volume is an issue too, with Arias estimating that CDC’s public-health data systems are only capable of handling about 75% of the data coming in from the states, localities and private labs that conduct much of the testing. That percentage will only go down in the coming years if requested updates aren’t funded and implemented, she said…”
“IT problems of a different nature interrupted the Department of Health and Human Services’ coronavirus response funding planning, according to a March 10 report by Politico…” Read the full article here.
Source: Are public-health data systems up to the coronavirus challenge? – By Derek B. Johnson, March 11, 2020. GCN.
