Position Paper: AMIA Advocates National Health Information System in Fight Against National Health Threats

To protect public health and national safety, AMIA recommends that the federal government dedicate technologic resources and medical informatics expertise to create a national health information infrastructure (NHII). An NHII provides the underlying information utility that connects local health providers and health officials through high-speed networks to national data systems necessary to detect and track global threats to public health. AMIA strongly recommends the accelerated development and wide-scale deployment of electronic public health surveillance systems, computer-based patient records, and disaster-response information technologies. Such efforts hold the greatest potential to protect our citizens from disaster and to deliver the best health care if disaster strikes.