Surescripts and health IT company Audacious Inquiry are teaming up to make patients' medication history data more easily accessible to providers during disasters like hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic.
As part of the collaboration, Surescripts, an electronic prescribing company, will integrate medication history data into Audacious Inquiry’s Patient Unified Lookup System for Emergencies (PULSE) tool.
“Today the nation faces a global pandemic on the heels of a historically active hurricane season. As the COVID-19 response has made abundantly clear, the IT infrastructures of our emergency response and public health agencies are not well-equipped to handle these threats,” said Scott Afzal, president of Audacious Inquiry.
“PULSE Enterprise is a valuable tool for bringing critical information to the front lines of clinical response, and we are proud to partner with Surescripts to fill an existing gap in disaster medical care," he said.
Audacious Inquiry developed PULSE as a health IT tool to be used during emergencies such as hurricanes, pandemics, tornadoes or terrorist attacks where patients are displaced and clinicians or emergency response personnel are providing care in alternate care settings like field hospitals, medical shelters or quarantine sites.
PULSE Enterprise is a cloud-based software solution that allows electronic patient data to be viewed by providers in non-routine healthcare settings and to public health authorities performing clinical case augmentation and epidemiological assessments.
Medication maintenance is one of the most common healthcare needs following disasters, and medication interruption for even a short period of time can be of great risk to people living with chronic conditions, according to the companies.
Integration of Surescripts medication history into the PULSE tool will enable emergency response personnel working in non-routine care settings to view patients’ consolidated medication history lists during declared emergencies and reduce the opportunity for medical error or interruption in medication adherence.
“Most physicians already have access to complete and accurate patient medication history data when prescribing or during medication reconciliation,” explained Ryan Hess, vice president of product innovation at Surescripts. “However, during a natural disaster or other emergency, care providers need to deliver medications outside of normal care settings, and it could be a matter of life or death for critically ill patients who have been displaced and may have lost their medications or can’t recall their medication list."
In 2014, following Hurricane Katrina, the Baltimore health IT company contracted with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to evaluate disaster preparedness and recovery options, ultimately identifying the need for a portal giving qualified emergency responders and healthcare professionals secure access to medical records for displaced populations.
Audacious Inquiry deployed the first version of PULSE in 2016 on behalf of the California Emergency Management Services Authority. The PULSE platform was also recently adopted by the Texas Health Services Authority and has been integral to the state of California’s response to the 2020 wildfires.
Audacious Inquiry's solutions, which include its flagship Encounter Notification Service and the PULSE tool, serve more than 60 million people nationwide, the company said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on the gaps in health IT infrastructure and data exchange, particularly in the public health sector, Afzal said. The healthcare industry needs to make significant investments in interoperability tools as 2020 saw a record-breaking number of natural disasters, from California’s and Colorado’s largest wildfires to a tropical cyclone boom.
The application leverages the eHealth Exchange, the largest query-based national health information exchange network in the country, to display patient clinical histories to authorized medical providers in nontraditional healthcare settings, including special needs shelters, mobile field hospitals and other alternate care sites.
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"Investments need to be made to further the adoption of interoperability solutions even at a time when the tools may not be necessary. That’s the hard part of emergency preparedness and response. It's hard to attract budget dollars when there isn’t a disaster. But when the time comes, people will wish they made the investments that they hadn’t made," he said. "These tools are not a 'nice to have' but are a 'must-have.'"
As a nationwide health information exchange, Surescripts processed 19 billion secure transactions in 2019, while connecting 1.78 million healthcare professionals and organizations with actionable patient data for 95% of the U.S. population.
The company delivered 2.2 billion medication histories, a 19% increase. Its record locator and exchange service delivered 334 million links to clinical document locations and 143 million documents listing where patients had previously received care. Nearly 136,000 clinicians used the service—a 28% increase in 2019.
“Since its inception, the PULSE Initiative has aimed to enable more coordinated and effective care for individuals and communities affected by disasters and public health emergencies by ensuring that appropriately verified users have access to critical, life-sustaining information no matter the setting,” said Elise Sweeney Anthony, executive director of ONC’s Office of Policy, in a statement.
“ONC is proud to support the PULSE Initiative, and we are excited to see the innovation and growth of private sector PULSE technical solutions like the one developed through the partnership between Audacious Inquiry and Surescripts," Anthony said.