Florida Provides Secure Access to Health Records During Public Health Emergencies and Disasters Through PULSE Enterprise

Feb 09, 2021 at 06:14 pm by pj


 

The State of Florida is deploying Audacious Inquiry’s secure disaster response platform, the Patient Unified Lookup System for Emergencies™ “PULSE” Enterprise, for access to critical health information during declared emergencies

Audacious Inquiry (Ai), an industry leader in connected care, has contracted with the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) to deploy the Patient Unified Lookup System for Emergencies™ (PULSE) Enterprise platform in Florida. The State of Florida has adopted this technology to provide immediate public health assistance around COVID-19 and to prepare for the 2021 hurricane season. PULSE Enterprise is branded in Florida as the Emergency Patient Look-Up System or E-PLUS.

PULSE Enterprise is the next generation of the PULSE edition leveraged by providers, emergency responders, and public health officials during the California wildfires from 2017-2019. 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. PULSE Enterprise also integrates with Surescripts, the nation’s leading health information network, to provide emergency response personnel consolidated medication history data during declared emergencies.

The new service equips response teams with more robust query, auditing, and reporting capabilities to support a wide range of disaster scenarios and crises. Through PULSE Enterprise, Florida’s emergency response personnel can securely access patient health information in nonroutine healthcare settings so providers can access the clinical and medication histories of patients who have been displaced by disaster. The service has also supported critical public health activities during the COVID-19 response by providing access to patient health information used for epidemiological assessments and clinical case augmentation. ­

In addition, through its Emergency Census™ feature, PULSE Enterprise offers the ability to locate missing individuals who have been displaced by disaster by sharing data in real-time with Florida’s statewide Encounter Notification Service® (ENS®). Emergency Census will enable Florida’s emergency response personnel to rapidly locate missing individuals who have been admitted or discharged from a hospital, health care facility, or emergency shelter.

“PULSE Enterprise is a valuable tool for bringing critical information to the front lines of clinical response, and we are pleased to support AHCA in their disaster readiness efforts”, said Scott Afzal, President of Audacious Inquiry.

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