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Minnesota e-Health Data Repositories: Assessing the Status, Readiness & Opportunities to Support Population Health

Description

Health care reform and the use of electronic health record systems is dramatically changing the health care landscape creating both challenges and opportunities for public health. High adoption of health information technology among Minnesota’s health care providers has created an opportunity to advance e-health by collecting and using these data to improve population health. It has been demonstrated that interoperable clinical data repositories can serve surveillance needs to support both public health and clinical care. Additionally, health reform is fostering the need for the collection of data to manage population health, compare and share data locally and across states for care coordination, and monitor cohorts and attributed populations. This project will provide a critical understanding of the status, challenges, and opportunities for leveraging the substantial investment in health care data systems to better support public health prevention programs, epidemiology, and surveillance to improve population health, address health disparities, and advance health equity.

Objective

This project describes the informatics characteristics of clinical data repositories among Minnesota health systems and their opportunities and readiness to support public health practice. The focus of the study is the use of these data for public health prevention programs and surveillance, including the opportunities to address health disparities. We examine technical, organization, and process readiness of repositories in support of epidemiology and other key public health programs, and how these data can be used as a statewide public health resource. 

Submitted by rmathes on