Have you ever thought about what it would have been like during the height of COVID-19 if no one could track the virus’s spread and the disease’s symptoms?
Interoperability has become a cornerstone of healthcare, making it easy to collect and share vital data. Take a look at how public health software connects disparate data to paint actionable pictures for health professionals.
When you’re sick, you go to the doctor, but health begins with the guidance that drives how you prevent and respond to illness. Public health focuses on protecting, promoting, and improving the health of communities.
And it’s not just about taking medication or seeing your doctor when you feel a little off. Public health professionals play key roles in every corner of life, including tracking diseases, encouraging vaccination, and impacting environmental and health laws.
Public health’s role follows a decades-old framework: the 10 Essential Public Health Services (EPHS). EPHS defines the activities public health should champion, divided into 10 overarching goals:
Keep a strong system running to support public health work.
Review public health efforts to constantly learn and make them better.
Provide access to specialized education to grow a competent healthcare workforce and leadership.
Identify Barriers and ensure equitable healthcare access.
Use and advocate for regulations to protect the public's health and safety.
Create policies that support individual and community health.
Collaborate to act on health issues.
Share clear information to encourage healthy choices.
Respond to health problems, outbreaks, and hazards quickly, including recommendations for vaccine administration.
Conduct a needs assessment, build a training team, and customize training plans.
Individual clinics and other public health entities can only do so much on their own. They need to be able to collaborate across facilities, hospitals, and state agencies to ensure comprehensive care for their community.
Interoperability across public health software makes this possible. This connection, where different tools can “talk to each other,” helps to effectively exchange electronic health information between healthcare and public health partners “in the right format, through the right channel, at the right time.”
Electronic health record (EHR) software is perhaps the most important form of public health software, and its interoperability has ripple effects:
Between paper notes and repeated data entry across multiple systems, documentation eats into healthcare activities. According to a 2022 study, nurses enjoy 50 percent time savings by using an interoperable EHR compared to a manual system.
Integrating devices with EHRs reduces manual effort and the risk of errors. The same study notes that using smart pumps with prepopulated infusion parameters reduced data entry keystrokes and opportunities for errors by 3.5 million across eight hospitals each month.
Interoperable EHRs drive savings. Not only does this public health software reduce documentation time and automate tasks to free clinicians up for care delivery, but it also makes it easier to implement value-based care that reduces readmissions and boosts revenue.
EHRs mitigate the gaps that can occur between care settings and platforms by syncing with public health databases. This makes tests or lab results accessible to providers across multiple settings, facilitating information sharing and reducing duplicate efforts during transitions of care.
Technology brings providers and public entities together. Public health officials can monitor patient data across health information systems to track disease outbreaks, respond to public health emergencies, and inform health policy decisions.
Specialists turn to interoperable systems to analyze data and adjust treatments to individuals’ changing clinical parameters. Public health software enables monitoring from progression to outcomes to inform research, drug discovery, and clinical trials.
Juno EHR plays key roles across the healthcare ecosystem. A trusted public health solution, it eliminates duplicative tasks through integration, workflow personalization, and automated data entry. It also keeps organizations current on regulatory compliance through codified data that simplifies reporting.
But that’s just a glimpse of its capabilities. Juno EHR supports public health from every angle, including by:
Juno EHR simplifies documentation that would otherwise steal time from patient care. Its intuitive interface streamlines workflows with quick templates, intelligent tools, and seamless integration to eliminate duplicate data entry, while the software works overtime to automate clinical decision support.
Reduce clinician burnout by shrinking documentation demands, optimizing coding and revenue cycles along the way.
Healthcare organizations can achieve key insights into population health amid outbreaks with Juno EHR’s data extraction and real-time disease surveillance. The software is built with HL7 FHIR APIs and is fully compliant with United States Core Data for Interoperability standards, so you can effortlessly coordinate with other agencies.
Instead of being caught off guard because of poor data tracking, monitor trends inside Juno EHR to accurately forecast incident rates and improve health outcomes.
Juno EHR simplifies end-to-end vaccine management at the patient, community, and organizational levels. With it, clinicians can not only add historical data and recommendations to patient records but also document administration for compliance.
Manual vaccine tracking creates dangerous gaps in community protection, but Juno EHR provides specialized tools for mass clinics and outbreak response. The software creates a comprehensive immunization registry with real-time data exchange, saving staff time on paperwork, improving vaccination rates through tracking and outreach, and identifying undervaccinated communities.
EHR interoperability transforms public health by saving clinicians time, elevating patient safety, and enhancing clinical response for entire communities. EHRs bring data together across systems to move beyond simple documentation, closing information gaps and stimulating care coordination.
Broaden your view of patient and population health. Juno EHR offers tools to improve documentation and support the broader community. Reach out today to schedule an overview to see how Juno EHR can transform your organization and its contribution to better public health.