CDC Embraces Health IT

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is enlarging its health information technology footprint.

The agency is taking on "a big role in enabling data exchange between the health care world and immunization registries, around bio surveillance and with electronic lab data exchanges for clinics and public health organizations," reported Federal News Radio this week.

Jim Seligman, CDC's chief information officer and source of the report, further noted that the agency has embraced Web 2.0 as a means of communicating with the public about health issues, Federal News noted.

Interest in the potential benefits of health IT was behind CDC's decision earlier this month to open a recently awarded $5 billion IT services contract to state and local governments. At the time of the announcement, the news organization quoted Seligman saying:

Much of the work we do is in partnership and collaboration with our state and local partners. It's part of our information supply chain.

One of our key goals is to compress the cycle time to get information so that we get closer to near real time situational awareness and the detection of events or trends in population's health.

The faster we can see that an outbreak is going on, whether a contaminated food product or a toxic agent in the water supply, the quicker we can then help the public health community respond to it and save lives.