This is a great idea, Tom. For instance, in the STD/HIV prevention arena, field workers have no way to communicate with each other (except for annual conferences). With the advent of the Internet and worldwide communications, it makes no sense to be advocating public health jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

Go for it, this sounds fantastic.
Best, Deb

Deb Levine, Exec. Director
ISIS, Inc.
www.isis-inc.org

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by Tara Bahait | Jul 30, 2007
 

The CDC, along with the partners they have enlisted, seem like the ideal organization to set and manage the standards for universal electronic medical records. This is one of those functions that can benefit from a centralized, "disinterested" party to organize and maintain it in the public interest. I'm just sorry that this project is only in the concept stage, since it is clear that private for-profit health insurance corporations are well on their way to becoming the de-facto standards for EMR and it is in the best interest of these organizations to develop proprietary software and to use the information for setting differential premiums and/or denying coverage to all but the healthiest individuals. This is clearly a Public Health issue and I feel most comfortable with the technology and information remaining with an organization whose interests are the public health, rather than in maximizing the return on investment to shareholders.

By centralizing the database, it might even be possible (using anonymous data-mining techniques) to detect emerging epidemics *before* they have become noticeable to individual researchers...an ideal application of this data by CDC.

As you develop the concept, I hope you will consider making the software and data structures "open source", making it easy for all other software and data-entry systems to produce records compatible with the standards you establish. Are you familiar with the Open Source Electronic Medical Records project called World Vista? (http://sourceforge.net/projects/worldvista-ehr/). It is based on the system developed by the VA (and many consider this to be the best electronic medical records software currently available).

You might also be interested in the work of the Markle Foundation, Connecting for Health project (http://www.markle.org/markle_programs/healthcare/projects/connecting_for...). Perhaps they might have some experience, information, or ideas that would be useful.

Best wishes on this project!

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