Public Health Task Force

The Public Health Task Force (PHTF) will be convened to provide recommendations on public health issues and challenges related to health IT. Specifically, the PHTF will be asked to review the availability and standardization of pregnancy status in EHRs and subsequent transmission of that status with laboratory orders. The Task Force will make specific recommendations on the following as it relates to Zika, but these recommendations may also be applicable to other public health issues:

• Is there a need to automate the clinical decision support (CDS) process in order to report timely information to public health?  If so, identify existing standards-based approaches for automating the CDS process as part of Zika response, such as Structure Data Capture (SDC), Clinical Quality Framework (CQF) and electronic case reporting.
• Identify the current challenges associated with the collection of pregnancy status at the time a Zika test is ordered.  How could standardization help to resolve these challenges?
• Identify best practices for sharing pregnancy status from the provider to both commercial labs and public health entities.