The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment Partners with Biospatial

(Falls Church, Va.) – The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) has completed Data Use and Analytic agreements to become the twenty-second state to partner with Biospatial, Inc. Biospatial uses emergency medical services and health-related data sources to provide timely, national-scale syndromic detection, monitor real-time trends, and alert to syndromic anomalies critical to the nation’s health and safety. The CDPHE will submit National EMS Information System (NEMSIS) data elements to the Biospatial platform to assist in national preparedness and enhance Colorado’s ability to visualize their data with other data layers of relevance.

D. Randy Kuykendall, director of the CDPHE Health Facilities and EMS Division, is pleased to partner with Biospatial to enhance utilization of Colorado’s EMS data stating, “This platform and its increased visualization will allow syndromic surveillance of topic areas where we may not have other data, such as suicide, overdoses, and traffic crashes.” Jeanne-Marie Bakehouse, chief of Colorado’s EMS and Trauma Branch, adds, “We can now build in performance measures, allowing our EMS agencies to compare themselves to the state and Colorado to benchmark itself to other states.” Colorado hopes also to utilize additional data-quality metrics in order to triangulate where improvements can be made and to gain additional benefits from the partnership such as sharing resources and use cases.   

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 data visualization tools, syndromic surveillance and alerting, summary dashboards, and clinical and operational reporting at no cost.  Users at local, state, regional, and national levels use the Biospatial Platform tools to support near real-time biosurveillance, preparedness and response, syndromic and opioid surveillance, and automotive safety missions.

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.

State EMS offices that are interested in participating with Biospatial should contact Dave Zaiman at dave.zaiman@biospatial.io or 612-961-5396.