UC Davis Health's Digital CoLab, along with the CDC Foundation and the Boston Children's Hospital, launched a digital pilot program that allows public health officials to use a surveillance dashboard to track opioid overdoses nationwide.
The pilot program is called Smart Cumulus, and the digital platform aims to enhance the data exchange process across healthcare organizations, research institutions and public health sites. The opioid overdose surveillance dashboard is the program's first application, and it will be used for Sacramento County Public Health and the Yolo County Health and Human Services Agency, according to an Aug. 28 news release from Sacramento, Calif.-based UC Davis Health.
The new program will improve the efficiency of sharing large datasets from electronic health records and clinician notes across institutions in a secure privacy-preserving environment. Sharing this information more quickly is meant to allow for increased multisite studies for population health initiatives, according to the release.
"The United States is in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic," Olivia Kasirye, Sacramento County health officer, said in the release. "The data and analytics we will be able to collect from the opioid overdose surveillance dashboard will help us to respond and address the health conditions of the communities that need it most."