The number of states capable of sharing information related to pandemics and other health threats on a national scale will triple in the next five years, according to a forecast to be released today by Government Futures, a government market research firm.
Only about 13 states currently have public health systems capable of sharing such information via the Public Health Information Network and other systems that collect national disease information, according to the study, which focuses on disease prevention, surveillance and response.
But by 2012, about 40 states -– encompassing 80 percent of the U.S. population -– will have interconnected systems, the firm predicts.
A high demand for facility coordination, the threat of an impending public crisis such as a pandemic or bioterrorism incident, and calls for more state funding to expand the network will drive the transformation, the report’s authors say.
“Public health does not stay confined to jurisdictional boundaries,” said Bruce McConnell, co-founder and president of the firm, which uses existing data, surveys and predictive tools to develop its forecasts.
“The need for collaboration in the multiplayer environment of hospitals and physicians and laboratories is probably the leading force for this kind of transformation,” he said.
Margaret Anderson, the firm’s co-founder, said that although “barriers to collaboration still remain -- including interagency rivalries and privacy concerns -- funding and the threat of crisis will drive progress.”
The firm’s leaders believe the buildup of resources for sharing public health information in the next five years signals the coming of Public Health 2.0, which they describe as a public health infrastructure that is collaborative, results-driven and agile.
McConnell said the best example of an existing Public Health 2.0 system is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Information Network. In addition to its traditional network elements, it incorporates newer information-sharing tools such as wikis and blogs.
McConnell and Anderson say such tools are useful, but barriers to their widespread adoption remain, including the need for improved ease of use and an ingrained concern about the privacy of health information.
“The tools are still a little bit primitive, and so you still have to be too much of a technician to be able to make them work,” McConnell said.
Furthermore, even though information shared via the network tends to be statistical and therefore stripped of personal identifiers, “there’s always the threat [to privacy], and that adds a layer of complexity,” he said.
Users must also heed the best practices for coordinating action. “It’s one thing to share information, and it’s another thing to really get down and collaborate and respond, and that takes time,” McConnell said.
To overcome those hurdles, the authors say users -- particularly older ones -- must develop a certain level of trust in one another. “In the public health arena, there is a spirit of collaboration that has always existed, so that’s helpful,” McConnell said.
Firms otherwise interested in government and health care tend to overlook the public health market, he added.
“This is an example of government moving in the right direction,” he said. “Perhaps this has an inspiration for not only [those] who are doing this today but people in adjacent mission areas who might think, ‘Maybe we could do something more collaborative.’”
Government Health IT presents Liesa Jo Jenkins, executive director of CareSpark, in this recent eSeminar, where she shared her experiences and insight into building a health information exchange that enhances community health, rewards regional collaboration and drives economic progress.
