New Lab Matters: Securing public health data in the age of COVID-19
Public health laboratories have been collecting and distributing data for decades, focused on the best practice of accessing the minimum patient data necessary to do…
informatics
Making Sense of the COVID-19 Data Story
by Rachel Shepherd, specialist, Informatics When COVID-19 cases began hitting the United States at a rapid rate in early 2020, public health was faced with…
Connecting the COVID-19 dots with technology
The emergence of COVID-19 required swift action to develop systems and processes that support public health agencies and their pandemic response efforts. In the last…
Bringing COVID-19 exposure notification to the public health community
Starting in 2006 with the Public Health Laboratory Interoperability Project (PHLIP)—one of the first systems that allowed public health entities to exchange standardized data—APHL has…
Moving data at the speed of a virus
by Rachel Shepherd, specialist, Informatics, APHL The public health system serves as the backbone to our nation’s health and safety; there is nothing more collectively…
Supporting rapid exchange of public health data is urgent, crucial and laden with challenges
By Jody DeVoll, advisor, communications, APHL In an era when digital communications move at blazing speeds, public health laboratories still have to resort to fax,…
New lab informatics courses introduce basics to non-specialists
Two online laboratory informatics courses now on the CDC TRAIN site help laboratory staff to understand how their jobs relate to their laboratory’s informatics system.…
Lab Culture Ep. 16: Informatics, health equity and bat snuggles
Joanne Bartkus, APHL's board president and director of the Public Health Laboratory at the Minnesota Department of Health, sat down with Scott Becker, our executive…
UberOps CEO talks public health in the cloud
In a very short time, Americans have become increasingly familiar with the cloud. Not the white fluffy ones in the sky, but the cloud where…
AIMS Platform: Outpacing Pathogens from the Cloud
By Rachel Shepherd, associate specialist, Informatics, APHL In a kindergarten classroom in Des Moines, a small boy begins to shiver uncontrollably. In a nursing home…