GE Healthcare to track H1N1 for CDC

GE Healthcare to track H1N1 for CDC

October 29, 2009 | Diana Manos, Senior Editor

BARRINGTON, IL – GE Healthcare has been selected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide surveillance data for H1N1 and seasonal flu activity throughout the nation.

According to GE officials, the Barrington, Ill.-based company will report daily to the CDC with information gathered from its Medical Quality Improvement Consortium (MQIC) database of nearly 14 million patient records. This will help the CDC better understand the characteristics of H1N1 outbreaks and determine trends.

Participating physicians automatically contribute de-identified data to the MQIC each day through normal use of GE's Centricity electronic medical record when they document information collected during patient visits to physician offices and clinics.

The MQIC collates clinical data documented by primary-care physicians using GE's Centricity EMR, giving the CDC tools to help track clinical symptoms such as fever, nausea and chills, prescriptions written and vaccination rates, as well as variables such as procedures performed, pregnancy and patient age, within 24 hours of being documented in thousands of participating doctors' offices across the country.

"We are pleased to help the CDC monitor this important public health issue," said GE Healthcare IT Vice President and General Manager Jim Corrigan. "This is a strong example of the power of digitizing the nation's medical records. With EMR data, not only are we able to accelerate the reporting of any aggregate changes to the health of the U.S. population, we're able to provide valuable and timely clinical data to health professionals."

Operated by GE Clinical Data Services, which also provides research and analytical services, the MQIC database is growing at a rate of nearly 30 percent each year, according to Corrigan. In peer-reviewed studies the database has been validated as representative of demographic and co-morbidity averages in the U.S. population.

The CDC's Office of Program Grant Officials said GE Healthcare was chosen for the database's built-in reporting capabilities. The resulting information helps the CDC better understand the characteristics of H1N1 outbreaks and determine who is at most risk for developing complications from the virus. Traditionally, this data is collected using insurance claims data, a process with a significant lag time.

"Using MQIC, the GE Centricity EMR's H1N1 surveillance reports communicate clinical findings at an early point of detection as many patients with milder flu symptoms will visit their primary care provider, instead of a hospital," said Peter Basch, MD, an internist with MedStar Health in Washington, DC, and a program participant. "The data passed along by doctors is a clinically accurate representation of H1N1-related symptoms and trends, which enables CDC researchers to track hotspots as the flu season evolves and quickly communicate that information to healthcare providers to improve awareness and response for better clinical outcomes."

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I thought this arcticle was really interesting due to the fact that in the case the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) which is a government agency is working together with the private sector. The situation right now with tracking and treating H1N1 has changed the way many governmental agencies work. Early diagnosis and tracking of H1N1 has become vital and by using the information from primary health providers (which is provided by GE healthcare in this case), the CDC can determine certain patterns or simply more information about the H1N1 virus itself to be able to treat it.