NEEDHAM, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Strategic Solutions Group (SSG), which has provided technology services and solutions to public health departments throughout the United States for nearly two decades, today announced an initiative to help agencies overcome the “data gap” by replacing legacy technology platforms and paper-based systems with Health Information Exchange (HIE) solutions that allow them to appropriately access and securely share a patient’s medical information electronically from other jurisdictions — or even in their own communities — to help them create faster and better responses to public health situations.

“The fundamental problem is obvious: not only do various entities in the healthcare vertical not share information through a single platform, but some of the most important data isn’t even stored electronically,” says SSG Senior Vice President Ted Hill. “There is simply no reason for this to be the norm in 2022. Hospitals have been storing healthcare data on computers since the 1960s. The first step needs to be a commitment to full digitization of all patient records, which will not only supply better care options for individuals but will also allow health departments to use this data and to guide investment of time, human resources, and investment decisions to develop broad policies related to everything from disease outbreaks to community health crises.”

HIE is a broad term that is often used in the context of sharing individual medical information between healthcare providers and can include everything from laboratory results to doctors’ notes to a list of medications that a person is taking. According to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), “Despite the widespread availability of secure electronic data transfer, most Americans’ medical information is stored on paper — in filing cabinets at various medical offices, or in boxes and folders in patients’ homes. While electronic health information exchange cannot replace provider-patient communication, it can improve the completeness of patient’s records, (which can have a big effect on care), as history, current medications and other information is jointly reviewed during visits.”

Hill says that “The good news is that there is at least one HIE in almost every state in the country, and several states have multiple in place to offer a variety of services that are quite different from each other. The trick is to build effective HIEs that create one health record for every person in the state, improve healthcare operations by aggregating as much data as possible from various sources and use data to enable investments and implement policy changes across the state that will reduce costs and improve care.”

For more information about SSG’s HIE solutions, visit SSG

About SSG

SSG is dedicated to modernizing the delivery of essential services in our communities. For two decades, SSG has partnered with over dozens of states and municipalities to improve their workflow, data management and IT systems implementation and operation. SSG’s flagship product, Casetivity, was purpose-built to automate essential workflows in public health organizations. SSG’s solution suite for public health transforms the way these organizations manage and execute their programs through data management and workflow automation.