The GAO Report “Public Health Emergencies: Data Management Challenges Impact National Response”, discusses how public health emergencies evolve quickly. However, public health entities may lack the ability to share new data and save potentially life-saving information in real time.
The report stressing the need to understand the challenges in the federal government’s management of public health data includes:
- Developing common data standards
- Providing the ability to exchange information with and process information from other systems
- Further developing the public health IT infrastructure
GAO’s recommendations include:
- HHS should ensure the plan includes how standards for interoperability will be used
- HHS needs to prioritize the development of the network by establishing specific near term and long term actions that can be completed to show progress
- HHS needs to identify an office to oversee the development of the network
- HHS needs to identify and document information sharing challenges and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic
Go to https://gao.gov/products/gao-22-106175 for the GAO report published September 22, 2022. For more information, contact Jennifer R. Franks franksj@gao.gov.