Webinar is titled “The Impact of Rapidly Developed Health Data Tools on Public Health Information.”

CHICAGO – May 3, 2021 – The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and Rush University Medical Center (RUMC) are pleased to host a free webinar titled “The Impact of Rapidly Developed Health Data Tools on Public Health Information” on May 12.

At the webinar, leaders from RUMC will share a detailed overview of the comprehensive cloud-based hub they created for COVID-19 data, while discussing how it enriches the surveillance, data reporting, and tracking of COVID-19 infections. RUMC collaborated with the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) to create the data hub, which improved care during the pandemic and allowed Chicago-area hospitals to better prepare for the ebbs and flows of COVID-positive patients.  

“Leaders at RUMC and CDPH stepped up at the onset of the pandemic, creating a critical information hub focused on COVID-19 data from our fellow citizens here in Chicago,” said AHIMA CEO Wylecia Wiggs Harris, PhD, CAE. “Their foresight helped improve patient care and save lives, and I’m thrilled AHIMA members will have an opportunity to learn about this important initiative.”

Bala Hota, MD, vice president and chief analytics officer at RUMC, and Casey A. Frankenberger, PhD, chief research informatics officer at RUMC, will present at the webinar. They said they will speak about how they considered data governance, secure transfer methods for data exchange and storage, analytics capabilities, and more when developing the data hub.

“The past year has been difficult for healthcare systems, but I’m proud of how Rush University Medical Center continued to adapt and innovate during the pandemic,” said Dr. Hota. “COVID-19 revealed how critical data sharing is, particularly when we are looking to stave off a pandemic. Tools like the one we will discuss could ultimately help identify issues or even new syndromes. It also has the potential to be an infrastructure model that helps us better combat chronic disease and major causes of morbidity.”

Editor’s note: Reporters interested in attending this webinar may contact AHIMA’s Mike Bittner at michael.bittner@ahima.org. You can read more about the data hub in this article from Health IT Analytics.

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About AHIMA
AHIMA is a global nonprofit association of health information (HI) professionals. AHIMA represents professionals who work with health data for more than one billion patient visits each year. AHIMA’s mission of empowering people to impact health drives our members and credentialed HI professionals to ensure that health information is accurate, complete, and available to patients and providers. Our leaders work at the intersection of healthcare, technology, and business, and are found in data integrity and information privacy job functions worldwide.