A recent article on public health and the flow of information from surveillance was something that those of us in the public health informatics field know quite well. Epidemiologists are among the most data savvy individuals I’ve ever worked with. Which is what makes the chronic underfunding of public health informatics a shame.
Meaningful use included some public health data exchange mandates, but what we’ve seen in COVID-19 is that it wasn’t enough.
The recent back and forth related to bed capacity data is a symptom of the larger issues around these data exchange processes. But prior to COVID-19, bed capacity data sharing from hospitals would have been unlikely.