The fundamental goals of public health, to safeguard and improve the health of communities, haven’t changed, but the technology powering them has. This is especially pertinent as the world adjusts to the COVID-19 pandemic and the tolls it’s taken on people, both physically and mentally. In the field of public health, an IT shift is underway with the influx of data, predictive analytics, and cloud computing. As we head into 2022, public health professionals have many options for developing and implementing dynamic public health technology solutions that influence patient care.
Public health care practitioners can improve health status or quality of life in at-risk populations, using both data analytics and cloud computing, in order to monitor new public health hazards and provide more effective treatments. The evolving relationship between technology and public health is diverse, encompassing anything from life-saving equipment to data-gathering systems.
Wearable devices that provide earlier diagnoses to prescribe individualized treatments, as well as telehealth technologies that virtually connect patients with health professionals, are all examples of how digital advancements are transforming the way health care services are delivered. When used in public health, technology provides sophisticated tools for practitioners, and allows them to acquire precise, complete datasets in real-time. The resulting information can aid in developing more effective, actionable health plans for a variety of scenarios, ranging from individual treatment to coordinating support networks that can deal with large-scale illness epidemics.
With Microsoft Teams, a Business Associate Agreement is put in place by default for customer organizations that are considered covered entities or business associates under HIPAA.
Microsoft.com/EN-US
Cloud computing solutions can help public health care organizations improve quality-of-life outcomes in at-risk populations, remove inequities, and lower overall health care expenditures, among other benefits. For real-time analytics and shared decision-making, cloud computing can also help public health organizations share data that is held across various information systems. A properly established cloud environment works to free up healthcare workers to focus on more critical activities while remaining efficient, secure, and cost-effective.
Information related to an individual, or patient population health is deemed as health data. Health care practitioners, insurance firms, and government agencies use various health information systems (HIS) and other technical technologies to collect this data. Analytics promotes a more exact identification of at-risk populations, through a more thorough understanding of ailments and disease, including the interaction between lifestyle, hereditary, and environmental determinants. Public agencies have seen improved surveillance of communicable and non-communicable diseases, as well as better-targeted intervention plans to improve health promotion and disease prevention.
Big data forms the foundation of precision medicine. Deciphering the root causes of complex or rare diseases requires large amounts of genetic, demographic, and other personal information.
brookings.edu
Working in synergy, data analytics allow for a comprehensive picture of each patient, as well as trends related to their geography, socioeconomic class, race, and propensity. The information gathered can be separated into distinct datasets, which can subsequently be examined. As the need for evidence-based policy grows, data and analytics hold the possibility of dramatically enhanced health promotion and disease prevention measures. Public health departments must determine the most effective ways to use powerful new tools, as well as how to best manage the issues that these burgeoning technologies present.
How Tallan’s Solutions Help Organizations Advance Community Health
Tallan’s Data & Analytics, Infrastructure & Security, and Apps & Experiences teams have provided significant solutions for states in the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, and Southwest. COVID-19 data, analytics, and reporting initiatives have also been supported by our teams in order to build trust in communities, increase surveillance of the disease’s progress, and assure accurate test and vaccination status and results in a user-friendly, consumable format.
Our areas of expertise include:
- Patient Population Analytics & Reporting
- HIV Surveillance
- COVID-19 Data Quality Analysis
- Data Integration & Analytics
- Application Infrastructure & Security Concerns
- HIV Surveillance
- Master Patient Indexing
- Epidemiology Support Services
- Process Automation
Solutions & Benefits
Our solutions have helped multiple public health organizations, including the Connecticut DPH. Our ultimate goal there was to streamline the entire laboratory data processing workflow. With over 70,000 lab reports received by the HIV Surveillance Program per year, both paper and electronically, this was a highly complex process. Connecticut’s Department of Public Health Achieved:
- 50% reduction in staff hours required to conduct HIV record searches and matching
- 50% reduction in duplicate data entry across HIV systems
- 75% reduction in data entry errors
- 25 % improvement in detection of acute HIV cases
- Time to identify Data-to-Care target events reduced from quarterly to daily
- Time to generate, match, and process an “Out-of-Care” list reduced from two months to zero days
Are you interested in learning more about advanced technology solutions for public health care? View this recent Tallan project that involved creating data trust in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Click here to request a demo for your organization!