But the restaurant inspection app is only the tip of the iceberg. Among many other duties, Liu and her team are responsible for the city’s disease surveillance system. New York City has 97 diseases and conditions that must be reported to public health authorities by laboratories or providers. But different labs use different types of information systems, codes and standards that must be reconciled. Consolidating that information — data matching, de-duping and transformation — is a massive job, said Liu. And it doesn’t stop there. The department also coordinates with medical providers to help ensure that patients are properly treated.
In addition, the department is helping to ease medical providers away from paper-based records. “We subsidize their infrastructure and give them hardware and software, to help remove their traditional paper processes, charts and folders. Our mission is to assist them in adopting technology and methods that measurably improve the health of New Yorkers.”
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