Chicago aims to improve disease surveillance and reporting

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the significance of disease surveillance and reporting for public health. Following a public health order mandating data submission by all acute care hospitals in Chicago, health care and public health experts united to develop a technical infrastructure to combine multiple data feeds from electronic health record systems. The teams also collaborated in creating a cloud-based environment that received electronic laboratory data, consolidated clinical data architecture, and merged bed capacity data feeds from sites to facilitate rapid health data exchange.