As California begins to emerge from its March 19 stay-at-home order, state officials will be making a data management platform available to local public health departments for free.
In an announcement Monday during Gov. Gavin Newsom’s daily press conference on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, California Department of Public Health Director Sonia Angell said the platform will focus on health information needed to protect and control specific cases of COVID-19. Newsom said Tuesday, during his daily press conference, that the state worked with Accenture, Amazon and Salesforce to develop the platform, which will “be providing the ability in real time to share information and collect data on a cross-county basis.” Among its other capabilities, the platform will:
• Focus on health and confidentiality. It won’t, Dr. Angell said, be “a broad database of all of an individual’s personal information.”
• Support case investigation and contact tracing, both key emphases of the state’s drive to relax stay-at-home rules, which is expected to happen later this week.
• Maintain interoperability with the state’s disease surveillance system, to enable a single-pane-of-glass view into the disease’s spread.
• Support symptom checks via text, chat, email and “phone automation.” This, Angell said, will make it “really easy for individuals to be able to share the information about how they’re doing with those in the county that are helping support them in either isolating or quarantining … .”
It’s not yet clear when the platform will be deployed, whether the California Department of Technology or CDPH IT staff are spearheading its creation, and whether private-sector tech companies are involved. Techwire may update this article.
