Leveraging Healthcare IT During Emergencies and Natural Disasters

Seems like a week doesn’t go by that you don’t turn on the news (or is it turn on your Twitter feed) and see a natural disaster happening somewhere in the world.  As I write this, we’re dealing with the wildfires happening across California, New Orleans is starting their recovery from Hurricane Ida, and the pictures coming out of New York and Philadelphia from Ida remind us of our need to prepare for these natural disasters.

What we don’t often talk about with natural disasters is the impact on healthcare and the role healthcare IT could play in helping during a disaster.  Plus, we often wait to talk about it after a disaster happens.  Since September is National Preparedness Month, we wanted to talk with an emergency preparedness expert, Lauren Knieser, Senior Director at Audacious Inquiry, to hear how they’re using Audacious Inquiry’s expertise in health data sharing to support natural disaster workers when a disaster hits.

In our discussion, Knieser shares the background of the Audacious Inquiry PULSE Enterprise product that was created in concert with government funding to address the challenges of the California wildfires and was then expanded to be applied to other states and the disasters they may experience. Knieser shares some of the real challenges and impacts on patients during a natural disaster and healthcare’s role in alleviating those pain points.

In many ways, one of the big challenges Knieser sees is the need for emergency management officials to be aware of what health IT can do to help them during an emergency or natural disaster.  For example, she shares about how health IT data can help with family reunification efforts during a disaster.  Something I saw first hand when my hometown of Las Vegas had the mass shooting on October 1st and many rushed to hospitals trying to find their loved ones.

While you may not be experiencing an emergency or natural disaster today, now’s the best time to become aware of what’s possible and how healthcare can help during a disaster.  As we learned during COVID, once the disaster hits, it’s hard to implement something new.  Take the time now to learn from Lauren Knieser, Senior Director at Audacious Inquiry.

Learn more about Audacious Inquiry: https://ainq.com/

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About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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