Uber Operations To Manage Florida & Texas ELC Projects September 7, 2010

Update: October 1, 2010

TALLAHASSEE – September 7, 2010 – Team members from Uber Operations will participate in the State of Florida and Texas CDC ELC Project.

Official Project Name: Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases (ELC) Infrastructure and Interoperability Support for Public Health Laboratories Project.

Project Background:

On February 17, 2009, the President signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). This statute includes The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 (the HITECH Act) that sets forth a plan for advancing the appropriate use of health information technology to improve quality of care and establish a foundation for health care reform. The public health focused activities being advanced under ARRA cover activities intended to carry out the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responsibilities to support meaningful use of electronic health records through two way communications between clinicians and national, state, and local public health entities. These activities focus on enhancing capabilities to advance one of the potential policy priorities of meaningful use for 2011, to “improve population and public health,” by conducting two distinct projects:

· Interoperability of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Immunization Registries

· Electronic Laboratory Reporting between Public Health and Clinical Care

While public health programs are already working in the above two areas, additional efforts are needed to enable public health programs to exchange electronic data with clinical care. Investing in these areas will allow for the more rapid advancement towards meaningful use of EHRs as intended by ARRA. The public health system is a key component of our nation’s healthcare system and without such a link to the clinical care system, the nation’s health care system is not complete. The activities outlined in these two projects will create an information sharing environment between clinical care and public health practitioners and is expected to lay part of the foundation for meaningful use of EHRs by bringing critical laboratory information and treatment history (vaccine registries) to the clinician’s desktop.

Purpose:

The purpose of the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases (ELC) cooperative agreement is to assist state public health agencies in improving surveillance for, and response to, infectious diseases by (1) strengthening epidemiologic capacity; (2) enhancing laboratory capacity and practice; (3) improving information systems; and (4) developing and implementing prevention and control strategies. The focus of the activities is on naturally occurring infectious diseases and drug-resistant infections. ELC aims to enhance the ability of public health agencies to identify and monitor the occurrence of known infectious diseases of public health importance; detect new and emerging infectious disease threats, identify and respond to disease outbreaks; and use public health data for priority setting, policy development, and for prevention and control. Specifically within the Health Information Systems/National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) component of ELC, a key goal is to develop direct electronic data exchanges between sources of data (such as health care providers or laboratories – i.e., clinical care) and public health agencies.

Eduardo Gonzalez Loumiet of Uber Operations will be managing the projects. For more information, please contact Eduardo at: eduardo@uberops.com

About Über Operations:
Founded in 2004 in Tallahassee, Florida, Über Operations is a leading provider of health care IT services. They provide the integration services for several large private and public organizations, including: Florida Department of Health, Texas Department of State Health Services, Mercy Hospital of Miami, Mayo Medical Labs, Association of Public Health Laboratories, and the University of Washington. Über Operations team members are experts in various technologies, such as Orion Health’s Rhapsody, Cloverleaf, Mirth, LabWare, PHINMS, and NHIN CONNECT, to name a few. Über Operations is nationally recognized by the Association Public Health Labs (APHL) and the CDC as their choice to architect, develop, host, and support the PHLIP RnR health information exchange Hub. For more information on Über Operations please visit www.ÜberOps.com .