To assist public health organizations better understand and use health information exchange, HIMSS and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) have collaborated to produce the Public Health & HIE Toolkit.

“The first priority of local health departments is to make it easier for people to be healthy and safe. Health information technology increases the capacity of local health departments to be able to do that. The new Health Information Exchange (HIE) Toolkit for Public Health will allow local health departments to automatically receive and analyze electronic health data to identify diseases that affect our communities, and it will enable local health departments to improve public health surveillance and response to those diseases,” said Roland Gamache, PhD, MBA, senior director of informatics at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO). “NACCHO was pleased to collaborate with HIMSS on this important resource. We value the partnership role we play with HIE organizations.”

The Toolkit was developed to help public health departments understand:

• what HIE services are and what types of organizations providing them;
• how a health department might use or support such services; and
• how to assess whether the value of participating in HIE will be worthwhile.

“The Public Health & HIE Toolkit is the first of its kind, created to help users identify and put into context many of the HIE concepts, technologies, and practices that will be important in the decision-making process when choosing their HIE solution,” said Joyce Sensmeier, vice president, Informatics, HIMSS.