About AMIA
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 15, 2001

Contact:
Mary Ellen Doran
301-657-1291 ext. 105
maryellen@amia.org



AMIA ADVOCATES NATIONAL HEALTH INFORMATION SYSTEM IN FIGHT AGAINST NATIONAL HEALTH THREATS

Bethesda, MD, November 13, 2001 - The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) has released recommendations to assist in the fight against national health threats similar to the terrorist incidents the country has experienced recently. The recommendations, developed by a newly established AMIA national health threat response group, advocate that the federal government protect public health and national safety by establishing a national health information infrastructure (NHII). A complete copy of the statement is available on the AMIA Web site at http://www.amia.org.

An NHII would provide the framework support for high-speed networks to connect local health providers and health officials with national health information systems to assist in containing and ultimately reducing deaths caused by biological or other outbreaks. The AMIA statement highlights six key components that the government should begin work on immediately:

• Identification of a single entity to coordinate strategy for the development of a national public health surveillance system;
  
• Federal funding to guarantee high-speed, dedicated connectivity to the Internet for all public and private health care facilities and providers;
  
• Recognition of HL7, a widely adopted health care messaging standard, as the standard for data interchange throughout the health care system;
  
• Development of an internet based, up-to-date, central health resource directory containing national, authoritative information about physical, human and organizational resources in health care;
  
• Accelerated implementation of public health surveillance systems such as the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System and Health Alert Network; and
  
• Adoption of the use of national identifiers, with appropriate privacy protection safeguards, to comply with currently developing federal HIPAA regulations.