HIMSS and NACCHO Announce the Public Health and HIE Toolkit

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NACCHO, in collaboration with the Health Information Management Systems Society, have worked together to create the Public Health & HIE Toolkit. This tool was designed to help public health officials understand, engage, and participate in Health Information Exchange.

“The first priority of local health departments is to make it easier for people to be healthy and safe. Health information technology increases the capacity of local health departments to be able to do that. The new Health Information Exchange (HIE) Toolkit for Public Health will allow local health departments to automatically receive and analyze electronic health data to identify diseases that affect our communities, and it will enable local health departments to improve public health surveillance and response to those diseases,” said Roland Gamache, Ph.D., MBA, Senior Director of Informatics at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO). “NACCHO was pleased to collaborate with HIMSS on this important resource. We value the partnership role we play with HIE organizations.”

The Toolkit was developed to help public health departments understand:

• What HIE services are and what types of organizations are providing them.

• How a health department might use or support such services.

• How to assess whether the value of participating in HIE will be worthwhile.

Local health departments use heath information to manage the well-being of their communities. This information includes syndromic surveillance, laboratory results, and immunization records. Local health departments are both users and contributors of health data. This toolkit will help local health departments decide the most advantageous way to participate in HIE. The following link will take you to an infographic that explains the relationship between public health and HIE.

“The Public Health & HIE Toolkit includes clear and concise organization and core information. The tools included in it will assist our department in analyzing HIE opportunities for risks and benefits; preparing recommendations for policy and resource allocation and developing needed data use agreements. I anticipate consulting the toolkit over the next few years, as we move toward health information exchange in our community,” said Kathy Cook, Information and Fiscal manager, Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department.

You can read the full press release on the HIMSS website.