By - With COVID-19 cases dwindling and deaths decreasing by the day, states across the country are beginning to reopen in some areas, and state lawmakers are rolling out their reopening plans. Unlike most states that are in the process of a state-wide strategy to reopening, Indiana decided to utilize its health information exchange dashboard data to tailor efforts by county.
This four-part, county-by-county, analytical approach is called, “Back on Track Indiana.”
Since its launch in late April, the Regenstrief Institute, Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE), and its partners, have labeled the EHR dashboard an early success.
“The first pillar is ensuring that hospitalizations are declining and the dashboard, data supplies that particular pillar to help guide when and where we are able to reopen,” Shaun Grannis, vice president of Data and Analytics at Regenstrief, explained in an interview with EHRIntelligence.
“We're actually using a data driven approach to reopen and so, not all counties are proceeding as quickly as others using these types of data.”
READ MORE: Health Information Exchanges Boost Interoperability in COVID-19
Following the coronavirus outbreak, the Regenstrief Institute, IHIE, and a handful of other Indiana state agencies developed and launched a COVID-19 EHR dashboard to gain more information and track the virus across the state.
With no vaccine or cure in sight, COVID-19 and its characteristics remain a mystery. Throughout the past few months, medical professionals weren’t sure how the virus would spread. As a result, researchers needed a surplus of patient data to make informed decisions.
To give the state of Indiana a more in-depth view of the pandemic within its own border, Regenstrief acted as a convener to help uncover and facilitate patient data to state leaders and researchers.
“The dashboard is a less identifiable, de-identified version of our private dashboard,” Grannis said. “Our private dashboard is actually more identified and more granular, and it is used on a daily basis by state public health leaders and other decision makers to inform the progress of the disease and help make decisions about resource allocation.”
While coronavirus has been a terrible, mysterious virus, it has forced health IT experts and government agencies to team up and enhance interoperability to help mitigate the spread.
READ MORE: How Interoperability, Patient Data Exchange Can Mitigate COVID-19
“I tell people that coronavirus exposes the cracks in the system,” he continued. “But coronavirus is also showing me that people are willing to collaborate to advance interoperability to combat the pandemic. It's been an excellent collaboration between state officials, public health officials, the health information exchange, and the informaticians at Regenstrief. When faced with great challenges like these, people rise to that challenge and the dashboard is a great example.”
Even though Regenstrief and its partners referenced the early success, there were some issues early on.
There were the typical challenges of pulling together the best partners, developing a working cadence, and then identifying the various data sources that need to come together to ensure everyone is on the same page to combat the new virus.
However, the team experienced other challenges that were special to COVID-19.
“Since it’s a new virus, we were developing new vocabulary standards to ensure it maintained the LOINC standard,” Grannis noted. “Early on in the pandemic, we began creating new link codes.”
READ MORE: 3 Ways to Boost Interoperability to Aid COVID-19 Containment
“We had to work with hospital systems to help them understand how to implement those codes and to start encouraging those health systems to start using the ICD-10 codes for coronavirus,” he continued.
Since COVID-19 became widespread in early March, the virus has evolved. As a result, the COVID-19 dashboard has also evolved.
“Early on we focused on getting signals from emergency departments and from laboratory testing,” Grannis explained. “Then, we moved on very quickly to recognize that there’s a whole lifecycle for a person experiencing coronavirus. It starts with initial emergency department visits, to testing positive, to transitioning to the ICU, then to a ventilator, and then to hopefully recovering.”
“The dashboard has evolved to ensure we can track all those elements of the COVID pathway,” he continued. “Again, the team has worked together on developing metrics in a way that support the information needs of the team.”
Regenstrief has helped develop public health EHR dashboards in the past, such as one for the H1N1 outbreak. And in this particular instance, Grannis sees a bright future and further optimization for the COVID-19 dashboard as the state continues to utilize its data.
“We think this dashboard represents the creativeness of the best and brightest in Indiana and unfortunately, the coronavirus is not going away tomorrow,” Grannis concluded. “We anticipate using this dashboard, likely over the next month and potentially years ahead.”
“We have the HIE framework and we have a generalizable approach to tackling this. I think that this dashboard may certainly evolve, but I think it's the infrastructure and framework that are going to be with us for some time to come.”
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Health Information Exchange Dashboard Tracks COVID-19 Next Steps - EHRIntelligence.com
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