The nation's public health tech system, from the CDC down to local agencies, are relying on technology from the turn of the 21st century that’s slowing efforts to track infected people, gauge how fast the virus is spreading and coordinate resources. It's the result of years of missed opportunities and a technology blitz that modernized big parts of American medicine but left public health agencies behind.
Congress approved more than $500 million for health data in a relief package last month but for now disease trackers say they’re drowning in paper reports and using outdated spreadsheets for critical tasks like contact tracing, or determining how many people were exposed to an infected individual.
“Our ability to do the detection work we need to do is hampered,” said Raquel Bono, the coordinator of Washington state’s coronavirus response. “We don’t have a single data repository for tracing per se,” she said, adding that record-keeping and reporting is “primarily manual.”
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The heart of the problem is a cumbersome, paper-based system that contact tracers rely on to find infected people and that health authorities scrutinize to gauge how fast disease is spreading and where.
Doctors are supposed to flag public health departments when they see patients diagnosed with certain conditions. But the need to fill out paper forms means cases slip through the cracks: the CDC's Conn told a federal health IT advisory committee that about one in 10 Lyme Disease cases don’t get reported.
Reporting standards also vary from county to county. And doctors often have to report to more than one jurisdiction if a patient lives in one county, works in a second and is diagnosed in a third.
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