—Charley Magruder, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Health Information Exchanges (HIE's) bring critical care components, such as labs, hospitals, state public health agencies, physician offices, imaging centers, and more, together into a single "network" where key services and applications can be shared. HIE's provide a common infrastructure to connect medical providers and public health organizations, a common infrastructure that can be reused over time to support new services and applications. Monitoring population health requires bi-directional information sharing between state health departments and the CDC, and HIE's play a critical role in providing clinical decision support, identifying notifiable cases, and creating bio-surveillance records. This presentation will demonstrate the flow of information between the physician's office, HIE, state health department, and the CDC to support bio-surveillance. It will emphasize the value of HIE's in the flow and the importance of mapping and visualization at the state public health department and in using summarized bio-surveillance data at the CDC.