The California Health eQuality (CHeQ) program managed by the UC Davis Institute for Population Health Improvement (IPHI) awarded a $417,011 contract to Scientific Technologies Corporation (STC), a population health informatics service company based in Tucson Arizona.
STC in collaboration with CHeQ and the California Department of Public Health will develop an immunization “gateway” to allow healthcare providers throughout most of California to electronically submit patient immunization records for routing to state regional immunization registries to enable secure access by doctors, schools, daycare centers and parents. STC will provide planning, design, development, testing, and implementation services on the gateway project which is expected to launch April 2013.
The web-based immunization gateway will increase the capacity so that patient immunizations records can be received from a large number of healthcare providers and fulfill Stage 1 requirement for federal meaningful use of EHR technology.
The gateway will focus on processing data for seven of the state’s 10 regional immunization registries to include the San Francisco Bay Area, Central Coast, Central Valley, Greater Sacramento, Inland Empire, Los Angeles, Northern California, and Orange County. The remaining areas San Diego, San Joaquin, and Imperial counties use different systems and are not included.
“Developing an immunization gateway is a big step toward reaching our goal of making complete and accurate immunization information available to parents, patients, schools, day care centers and healthcare providers,” explained Kenneth W. Kizer, IPHI Director. “Having this information readily accessible will assist public health workers in their efforts to prevent many infectious diseases and should help parents and school officials stay on top of their children’s need for shots.”
