Opportunity and Caution

There are signs that Canada and other jurisdictions are responding by adapting existing information systems and developing new ones to connect covid-19 patient information from different health care sectors. In our local jurisdiction, all hospitals worked together to create a standard line listing that is transmitted to the regional public health department where is it merged with their information systems. The public health information system serves as the central point for covid-19 information and forms the basis of contract tracing, surveillance and modelling. The availability of robust and integrated hospital data improves surveillance and planning, including modelling future hospital capacity in the event of surges.
There is a tremendous effort to organize covid-19 hospital data for research. These initiatives can inform how hospitals and public health can work together to generate integrated information systems that are needed to control and plan for covid-19 in the coming year or more.