Policymakers press for public health IT measures

Public health experts lobbied for including more public health goals into the "meaningful use" incentive plan, including ways to make it easier for public health minders to measure population health trends in chronic and virus-borne diseases.

One idea floated during the July 29 meeting of Health IT Policy Committee's meaningful use work group was to have certified electronic health record systems carry a feature or "button" that would transmit data to state public health agencies to make case reporting easier for physicians and hospitals. Dr. Paul Tang, the panel's chairman and chief medical information officer of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, told the workgroup that the Health IT Standards Committee could potentially take on the task "to come up with standards of interoperability for the public health sector."