athenaResearch to report on flu activities amid shutdown
As the federal government shutdown continues with nearly 70 percent of Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) employees furloughed, athenaResearch will help fill the gap by sharing its data on communicable diseases, starting with the flu.
Noting its concern about the shutdown of the CDC’s flu surveillance program—in particular as flu cases can begin to accumulate as early as late summer and early fall—athenaResearch Director of Core Analytics Iyue Sung announced the company’s intention to help by sharing its data on flu and other communicable diseases.
“Because the athenahealth database is built on a single-instance, cloud-architecture, we have the ability to report data in real time,” Sung wrote in an Oct. 4 blog post.
Looking at current trends, he said there is no evidence of an early influenza outbreak but added, “recent history shows that the flu can begin spreading at any time, and once it does begin, it spreads very quickly.”
Thus to help keep the public abreast of an outbreak and to encourage vaccinations, he said athenahealth will share its 2013-2014 data throughout the shutdown. “We believe that … will be valuable to the healthcare community.”
The full blog post is here.