Athenahealth, a Watertown, Mass.-based EHR vendor, announced on Dec. 10 that it developed an interactive flu dashboard that tracks the spread of the illness across the U.S.
The AthenaInsight Flu Dashboard extracts data from the EHR vendor's network to measure flu-like symptoms across 1 million patient visits per week to more than 25,000 pediatricians, primary care providers and emergency medical providers. With the initiative, Athenahealth aims to compare how different state populations are affected by the flu across the country.
The dashboard uses diagnosis codes from insurance claims data at both the state and national level to quantify how many patients with flu-like illness are seen by each provider. The technology then estimates the proportion of symptomatic patients who are seen by providers around the country.
The dashboard is updated weekly to show trends in near real time and offers year-over-year data to track when the flu peaked in previous seasons.