Page 40 - FCW, January/February 2021

ALL-HANDS
EFFORTS TO
MARSHAL
VACCINE DATA
Integrating data from health information exchanges, immunization registries and citizen- facing scheduling systems is essential for the
massive COVID-19 vaccination effort
BY STEPHANIE KANOWITZ
Vaccinating about 330 million U.S. residents against COVID- 19 hinges on a variety of enti- ties being able to exchange health information. Fortunately, public- and private-sector organizations are work- ing on the technology to facilitate that collaboration.
On Jan. 19, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) awarded $20 million to proj- ects that support health information exchanges (HIEs) and immunization information systems (IIS). The funding was made available under the Corona- virus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act and supplements the $2.5 million already awarded to five HIEs through the Strengthening the Technical Advance- ment and Readiness of Public Health via HIE (STAR HIE) Program in Sep- tember 2020.
The new funding allocates more money to four of the five previous recipi- ents and adds support for 17 new ones. There are 63 IIS and about 100 HIEs nationwide.
Peter Ashkenaz, an ONC spokesper-
son, emphasized the key role that all those organizations play in ensuring that COVID-19 vaccines are adminis- tered quickly and efficiently. “Through collaboration with HIEs, public health agencies should be able to better track and identify patients who have yet to receive their second dose of a COVID- 19 vaccine and/or better identify patients who may be high-risk and have not yet gotten a shot,” he said. “This supplement will also improve the methods used for tracking and supporting COVID-19 vac- cination administration.”
Also in January, ONC awarded a grant to the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials to expand immunization data sharing among IIS and HIEs in up to 40 states. That work will be conducted in coordination with STAR HIE and a COVID-19 dashboard project that is in development. The data-sharing approach will vary based on each state’s health IT systems and infrastructure, but the goal is to integrate immunization data with other sources to aid in COVID-19 response, Ashkenaz said. For example, immunization registries typically don’t contain demographic and comorbidity
data, while HIEs do.
ONC’s latest initiatives build on its
ongoing work with HIEs, trusted third parties that partner with health care enti- ties, he added.
“The exchange of data between HIEs and IIS helps to make the best use of information inherently available in many HIEs,” Ashkenaz said. “With all of these efforts, we also aim to specifically improve the HIE services available to support communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. This is intended to build the capacity of health care pro- viders who care for vulnerable or at-risk populations and communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Another objective of STAR HIE is to improve the ability of public health agen- cies to respond to future pandemics and other emergencies.
California’s approach to
vaccine management
While ONC pursues its efforts at the fed-
eral level, states continue to handle the bulk of vaccine management. On Jan. 25, California launched My Turn, which
38 January/February 2021 FCW.COM