Pew Urges Federal Government to Expand Electronic Data Sharing to Improve Public Health, Patient Matching

The Pew Charitable Trusts sent a letter April 1 to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology calling on the agency to include more data in its Core Data for Interoperability set, a list of information that all electronic health record systems must be able to share with each other.

Specifically, the letter highlights the importance of data that could help public health agencies better understand and track the spread of diseases such as COVID-19. It also urges the agency to require that individuals’ addresses be formatted in the U.S. Postal Service’s standard, which could make it easier for health care facilities to accurately link patients’ records from different locations.