CDC Releases On-Line Environmental Health Tracking System
Posted Jul 15 2009 8:10pm
The future of tethered personal health record (PHR) products, as in the case of HealthVault and Google Health, lies on the web. The term tethered here means that these electronic records have links to hospital and physician office EMRs such that data from them can be copied to the PHRs. Moreover, web-based PHRs also provide the opportunity to link to other valuable medical information resources on the web. For example, a consumer might highlight the name of a drug or disease in his or her personal health record and launch a search of trusted web resources to learn more about the topic. A recent article (see: CDC Launches Online Health Tracking Network ) alerted me to another possibility -- tracking environmental exposures and chronic health conditions on the web. Below is an excerpt from the article:
The Environmental Health Tracking Network [of the CDC] is the first program available to the general public, as well as scientists and health professionals, that follows environmental exposures and chronic health conditions on the CDC's website....The online tool presents information about air and water pollutants and environmental health issues such as asthma, cancer, and heart disease in a single resource.By unifying the health demographic information in a single program, the CDC say it hopes to help scientists make a variety of environmental and health connections that heretofore couldn't be analyzed in one location....To further increase public awareness of the new tool, the CDC released a video advertisement for the Health Network on YouTube, stressing the correlations between environmental and personal health as well as the information now available through the CDC's website. Although 17 local and state health departments currently contribute to the online resource, the CDC hopes to expand the network to all 50 states and develop a complete national picture of public and environmental health....CDC officials said the resource has already had 73 success stories, in which information from the Web site has led to action to control potential illnesses from environmental exposure.The agency cited a Utah case in which a concerned citizen contacted the Utah Department of Health about what he thought was an unusual number of cancer cases in his neighborhood. Prior to the availability of the new software, a multi-year study would have been necessary to collect data. But through the Utah Tracking Program, officials were able to respond in less than a day, telling the man his local cancer rate was no higher than in the rest of the state, CDC officials said.
Bravo! What a great idea and effort on the part of the CDC scientists and public health officials. The home page of the Environmental Health Tracking Network features the following three categories: Environments, Health Effects, and Location. Under Health Effects are the following four categories: Asthma, Cancer, Childhood lead poisoning, and More health conditions. Clicking through Cancer and then Leukemia under Additional Links displays a page captioned Leukemia and the Environment. The site, even in this early stage, provides valuable data. The site is a little quirky and probably designed by an epidemiologist. Once you get the hang of it, you will find a treasure trove of useful health data.
A mash-up is a Web application that combines data or functionality from two or more sources into a single integrated application (see: Web-Based PHR Mash-Ups ). The availability of the Environmental Health Tracking Network provides an early view of the potential for mash-ups linking our PHRs with other health resources on the web. For example and in this particular instance, the owner of a PHR could be automatically alerted to local environmental problems such as an outbreak of an infectious disease. Contrariwise, the CDC could use the national network of PHRs for reporting local outbreaks of conditions like flu or food-borne bacterial diseases. This would be similar to the syndromic surveillance systems being installed in hospital emergency departments and used in connection with bioterrorism monitoring.
The future of tethered personal health record (PHR) products, as in the case of HealthVault and Google Health, lies on the web. The term tethered here means that these electronic records have links to hospital and physician office EMRs such that data from them can be copied to the PHRs. Moreover, web-based PHRs also provide the opportunity to link to other valuable medical information resources on the web. For example, a consumer might highlight the name of a drug or disease in his or her personal health record and launch a search of trusted web resources to learn more about the topic. A recent article (see: CDC Launches Online Health Tracking Network ) alerted me to another possibility -- tracking environmental exposures and chronic health conditions on the web. Below is an excerpt from the article:
Bravo! What a great idea and effort on the part of the CDC scientists and public health officials. The home page of the Environmental Health Tracking Network features the following three categories: Environments, Health Effects, and Location. Under Health Effects are the following four categories: Asthma, Cancer, Childhood lead poisoning, and More health conditions. Clicking through Cancer and then Leukemia under Additional Links displays a page captioned Leukemia and the Environment. The site, even in this early stage, provides valuable data. The site is a little quirky and probably designed by an epidemiologist. Once you get the hang of it, you will find a treasure trove of useful health data.
A mash-up is a Web application that combines data or functionality from two or more sources into a single integrated application (see: Web-Based PHR Mash-Ups ). The availability of the Environmental Health Tracking Network provides an early view of the potential for mash-ups linking our PHRs with other health resources on the web. For example and in this particular instance, the owner of a PHR could be automatically alerted to local environmental problems such as an outbreak of an infectious disease. Contrariwise, the CDC could use the national network of PHRs for reporting local outbreaks of conditions like flu or food-borne bacterial diseases. This would be similar to the syndromic surveillance systems being installed in hospital emergency departments and used in connection with bioterrorism monitoring.