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Each week, the CDC publishes an influenza summary update and as public health professionals already know, this year’s flu season has started strong and early. This year’s flu season got the earliest start since the “moderately severe” season of 2003, according to WebMD Health News.

So far, flu-like illnesses have been reported as “widespread” in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. And WebMD’s cold and flu map is showing additional “severe” flu activity in Georgia, South Carolina, and South Dakota.

EpiCenter’s data is showing a similar uptick in national flu-related ER visits. From October through mid-December, fever-related ER visits have increased nearly threefold—while respiratory-related ER visits have slightly increased.

The CDC estimates that 112 million Americans have already received flu shots this season—meaning 37% of the eligible population endured the needle or nasal spray. HMS will keep tabs on the flu data that EpiCenter collects and continue to post updates to provide public health professionals with additional information on this year’s flu season.

HMS is currently working toward receiving Modular Certification (Public Health Surveillance) for its Mergence platform.  This will assist hospitals in achieving Meaningful Use Compliance—without requiring facilities to change their current EpiCenter or EpiStart data feeds.

The key to this certification is the utilization of HMS’ Mergence data integration engine. Mergence, which is a service provided to a medical facility, was the first open source integration engine to work with HL7 and general XML data types. While the first generation of Mergence was open source, today’s Mergence has been fine-tuned to meet our clients’ needs.  Mergence is suitable to a variety of tasks that HL7 integration engines simply cannot accomplish. Data from Mergence is sent in certified, secure format to HMS’ EpiCenter system.

HMS will be able to route incoming data feeds through the Mergence engine which will then output a data stream, in the HL7 format required by MU2, and onto EpiCenter or EpiStart, thereby meeting the MU2 requirements, and implementation specifications, related to the submission of Syndromic Surveillance data to public health departments.

“Providing this service affirms our commitment to customer service,” states Kevin Hutchison, HMS President and CEO. “It ensures that current—and future—users of the system continue to gain valuable insight and support regarding important issues that impact public health.”

Superstorm Sandy’s effects may linger longer than expected, from a public health perspective. According to a November 8th article on Accuweather.com, Sandy may have long-term impacts on public health.

The article cites Patrick Kinney of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, who states that threats may still emerge – even though the storm is long gone. “This particular storm, I think we’re still learning what the health impacts specifically were,” he states.

Kinney cites patterns similar to previous storms – most initial deaths were from flooding. This was followed by fatalities that occurred due to debris removal, fire, or electrical damage. “From a longer-term perspective, you start looking at things like the effects of the power outage: What does that mean for the spoilage of food? For the contamination of the water supply? You also worry about access to routine medical care,” according to Kinney.

The article also addresses issues such as an inability to access medication in the storm’s aftermath – leading to illness and increased visits to hospital emergency rooms.

Read the complete article here. And check back to read about what we learned by analyzing the community health surveillance data collected by EpiCenter during and after the storm.

According to EMR Daily News, market research company TechNavio prepared a report stating that analysts believe that the EHR Systems market in North America will see an annual growth rate of 7.85% through 2015.

“One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the increase in government support,” according to the article.

The findings were presented following an in-depth market analysis with input from industry experts. EMR Daily News states that issues addressed in the report include key market trends, challenges to market growth, key vendors in the market space, and strengths/weaknesses of those key vendors.

Read more at EMR Daily News or download the complete report.