EHR Public Health Alerting Project- Initial Demonstration Panel Session

The EMR Alerting Project is fostering communications between public health and clinical care through implementing the HITSP T81 standard within electronic medical records. A demonstration of the concept was presented at the 2009 HIMSS Interoperability Showcase through the use of a web service that provides public health alerts relevant to the patient being seen by matching the characteristics of the patient to the alert and returning to the electronic medical records system the content of the alert and as well as support information to be used by the physician in making clinical decisions regarding the patient.

 The objective of this session is to describe the various components of the EMR Alerting system. The first presentation, by Nedra Garrett of CDC, will provide an overview of the project and will discuss future activities. The second presentation, by Catherine Staes, will discuss the information framework defined for the alerts and findings from an investigation of information presented in alerts from varying public health agencies to healthcare providers in Utah during the 2009 Influenza A H1N1 (swine flu) outbreak. The third presentation by Rich Seagraves, will present the functionality of the Alert Knowedge Repostitory, the web service accepts, maintains and serves up information to physician. The fourth presentation, by Keith Boone, will discuss lessons learned in implementing standards-based alert messages within the GE Centricity® EMR and other EHR applications.