The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented global economic and healthcare crisis that is far from over. The intersecting needs of patients, providers, delivery networkers, and researchers require a level of collaboration and interoperability most people could not have imagined. The 21st Century Cures Act hoped to foster improved data sharing, but this crisis has dramatically accelerated that need.
IMO initially ensured that COVID-19-related EHR data collection was clinically relevant and specific by releasing COVID-19-specific terminology and codes in January and updating those dictionaries monthly. We then released COVID-19-specific value sets to our customers free of charge. We are now expanding the scope of our support by publicly releasing additional content to facilitate the collection and standardization of COVID-19 data globally.
I am pleased to announce that IMO has released an open source data package of content for COVID-19 that allows IMO and non-IMO partners and customers to speak the same clinical language across their enterprises and in collaboration with others. With that common clinical language available across the global health information ecosystem, it is our belief that IMO will enable better insights into the data required to manage this pandemic.
This data package includes terminology and mapping information, which allows the capture of detailed COVID-19 clinical information (e.g., problems, procedures, labs) within your point of care applications, aggregation and normalization of the data across your enterprise, and then summarization and reporting or sharing of the data with other collaborators. The package also includes an integration best practice guide so that you can quickly and accurately integrate this new content into your health information systems.
IMO is releasing this content under the Creative Commons License (v4.0) with the hope that it will be widely distributed. You can download the open source IMO content for COVID-19 here.
IMO also understands that the requirements for managing information around this pandemic go beyond the scope covered by this open source data package. This includes the definition of comorbidities, symptoms, and treatments. IMO is in the process of determining the best way that we can help with those as well. Stay tuned for further updates.
