Michigan Partners with Biospatial

October 1, 2018 (Falls Church, Va.) – The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) Bureau of EMS, Trauma, and Preparedness has completed Data Use and Analytic Agreements to become the eleventh state to partner with Biospatial, Inc. MDHHS will be submitting National EMS Information System (NEMSIS) data elements to the Biopatial Platform to both assist in national preparedness and enhance the state’s ability to visualize their data with other data layers of relevance.

Michigan’s State EMS Director Kathy Wahl plans to use the Biospatial Platform as a surveillance tool for population health. Many stakeholders are looking for insight into health issues, including the opioid crises and naloxone administration. “Currently, in order to provide information, there is a great deal of manual time pulling information from NEMSIS Version 2 and Version 3,” states Ms. Wahl. “Biospatial will streamline that process and allow us to provide a more up-to-date, accurate reflection of Michigan EMS involvement in the response to the opioid crisis.” The Bureau of EMS, Trauma and Preparedness plans to provide  Biospatial Platform access to Michigan’s Medical Control Authorities and local EMS agencies, and to partner with other state bureaus and departments, such as the Bureau of Epidemiology and Population Health and the Michigan State Police Traffic Records Coordinating Committee.

Biospatial uses Emergency Medical Services and health-related data sources to uniquely provide timely, national-scale syndromic detection, monitor real-time trends, and alert to syndromic anomalies that are critical to the nation’s health and safety. Biospatial develops partnerships with state and local data  owners to bring health-related data into the Biospatial Platform; in turn, Biospatial provides data owners access to the Biospatial Platform tools at no cost. Data visualization, syndromic trends and alerts,  summary dashboards, and clinical and operational reporting are provided to both data owners and paying federal and commercial subscribers to support preparedness and response, healthcare, pharmaceutical, automotive, and risk management markets.

Biospatial is working closely with the National Association of State EMS Officials (NASEMSO) to connect with state EMS offices. NASEMSO has partnered with Biospatial because of the value the analytics can provide to the NEMSIS data that state EMS offices collect. Biospatial has created a pathway to contribute to state-specific surveillance and offer real-time value to state epidemiologists and state health officers.