- Clinics Wary of Portals Despite Health Data Sharing Benefits
“Even as some locations are already passing through the initial case surge, the path forward — moving from coping with the crisis to ending it and restarting the economy — remains largely uncharted,” Michael Ames, senior director of healthcare and life sciences at SADA said in the announcement.
“Our first goal is to arm healthcare administrators and government officials with data-driven insights to navigate the road ahead,” he added. “The NRP will provide decision-makers with rich and timely data to understand how policy changes and social behaviors impact efforts to end the crisis.”
On April 6, HCA Healthcare announced its intent to join the portal initiative. The company said that the portal would allow individuals to come together digitally and analyze consolidated information to understand the current pandemic situation and anticipate what’s next.
Since then, Community Health Systems, Bon Secours Mercy Health, and other providers have also joined in on the initiative.
“The National Response Portal will support countless doctors, nurses, hospital administrators and suppliers on the front lines,” Manish Shah, senior vice president & chief information officer at Community Health Systems, said in the announcement.
“We’re proud to be part of this initiative with SADA and other healthcare providers to help these heroes with timely data to serve our communities to the best of their abilities,” he added.
Hospitals will be able to submit data each day which will focus on metrics such as ICU supply and utilization, ventilator supply and utilization, total numbers of positive, negative, pending COVID-19 test results, and total number of healthy patients who have been discharged.
“Bon Secours Mercy Health is pleased to partner with SADA on the National Response Portal to ensure health care providers and policy makers have access to the most up-to-date COVID-19 analytics,” said Jason Siegert, chief analytics officer, Bon Secours Mercy Health, in a statement.
“As many states prepare for the unknown that comes from reopening services and activities, we anticipate that the NRP will be a valuable resource to ensure the health and well-being of our nation,” he continued.
The NRP also consists of an interactive mapping view along with advanced data visualization dashboards.
The wide range of Google Cloud tools and technologies offered include Looker, BigQuery, Cloud Storage and Kubernetes, as well as Google’s best-in-class technologies for advanced analytics and machine learning, SADA said.
Experts will be able to leverage datasets through the platform, such as social distancing policy scores, traffic, and social mobility patterns, to help shed light on how public policy and social behavior intersect and affect the spread of the disease.
“The National Response Portal represents an important resource to help U.S. healthcare organizations, governments and the public understand and respond to the impact of COVID-19,” said Philip Moyer, vice president of industry sales at Google Cloud, in a statement.
By 