Southern states plan interstate record exchange

A group of southern states including Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi are in the process of building a broad regional health information network, in an effort sparked in part by the hurricanes which so decimated parts of the Gulf region in 2005. The kickoff will be funded by $4.1 million in grants, including $3.7 million to fund digital record sharing and $400,000 to support the task force's efforts. The funds are piggybacking on a proposal submitted by Louisiana before the hurricane. The initiative is being driven by a task force within the Southern Governors' Association, with members including public health officials, doctors and CIOs.

Not surprisingly, the task force plans to focus first on how to share medical data during an emergency. To get a start on this goal, it plans to focus its initial efforts on patient medication history, which it feels is the most important data set to begin with in an emergency. This spring, the group will test the ability of participants to connect with ICERx.com, a SureScripts/RxHub collaboration set up to provide data "In Case of Emergency" (ICE). "Doctors get 90 percent of the way to a diagnosis" with medication, says Roxane A. Townsend, MD, deputy secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals in Baton Rouge.

For more about the task force:
- read this piece from HHN Most Wired

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