In 2009, we partnered with the IU School of Medicine in a multi-year project to expand and develop innovative public-health information tools to improve public health systems infrastructure. We enhanced the Indiana Network for Patient Care (INPC), an operational health information exchange (HIE), to include geospatial information and a persistent link to non-clinical, community data from SAVI.
What did we do?
- Developed a geospatial web service to geocode patient and doctor addresses from an HIE
- Established permanent, updatable linkages between HIE clinical records and geospatial reference files
- Implemented processes that maintain privacy and security of clinical information
How are the enhanced data used?
- To improve routing of electronic laboratory reporting to county health agencies
- To help health practitioners identify community resources for patients
- To examine the social determinants of health
