ASPR launches health IT-EMS campaign

The Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) has launched a collaboration community campaign on IdeaScale that will facilitate the exchange of ideas regarding health IT use in public health and medical emergency preparedness, response and recovery.

Currently, few emergency medical services (EMS) systems are connected to a health information exchange or EHR, and challenges abound in sharing EMS data, including funding, proprietary systems and a lack of collaboration, wrote Kevin Horham and Tara Holland from ASPR's Emergency Care Coordination Center, in a March 18 blog post.

To that end, the community’s first campaign, Health IT Technology and EMS, will focus on health IT use in the pre-hospital environment. “It provides interested stakeholders a place to connect and continue the discussion on issues and successes surrounding connectivity to the new health information exchanges,” explained the authors.

The newly launched ASPR collaboration community can be found here.