Developing health informatics standards is crucial to improving patient care and health outcomes, defining our healthcare roles and as a guideline for best care practices. Every level of government has a role to play in preserving and promoting the safety and health of the public (Frieden, 2013). The development of healthcare informatics standards can be done at local, federal and state levels.
Local public health agencies are involved in increasing awareness and participation in healthcare informatics standards by building on the current standards such as the Public Health Data Standards Consortium. They are also responsible for communicating inconsistencies in the implementation of existing standards to state and federal agencies. They are also tasked with creating a collection of best practices, creating local advisory committees to ensure that all health data systems have purpose, privacy and confidentiality agreements.
State public health agencies information systems facilitate decision making in the development of healthcare information standards by enabling users access to health data records through simple systems that integrate this data which is used by the government to set industry standards and policies and monitor the public’s health. They are also responsible for supporting digital communication by establishing standards for data transmission and content, funding health information systems and encouraging the use of integrated health information systems(Yoon, Pollock & Foldy, 2020).
Federal health agencies play a leadership role in developing, adopting and assessing national healthcare informatics data standards. They are also responsible for improving healthcare delivery by forming informatics partnerships with the private healthcare sector such as the American Hospital Association. This is accomplished through identifying inconsistencies in the healthcare delivery system and using informatics-based methods to correct them. They are also tasked with improving Inter-Agency working to monitor outcomes and assess risk by creating standards methods, data sources, communication between complimentary digital healthcare systems and integrating and disseminating information from cross-jurisdictional information systems(Yasnoff et al., 2001).

References

Frieden, T. (2013). Government’s Role in Protecting Health and Safety. New England Journal Of Medicine, 368(20), 1857-1859. doi: 10.1056/nejmp1303819

Yasnoff, W., Overhage, J., Humphreys, B., & LaVenture, M. (2001). A National Agenda for Public Health Informatics: Summarized Recommendations from the 2001 AMIA Spring Congress. Journal Of The American Medical Informatics Association, 8(6), 535-545. doi: 10.1136/jamia.2001.0080535

Yoon, P., Pollock, D., & Foldy, S. (2020). National Public Health Informatics, United States. Health Informatics, 439-458. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-41215-9_24