Florida to join National Collaborative for Bio-Preparedness

The Florida State Department of Health recently entered into a data use agreement and analytics agreement with the University of North Carolina (UNC) to officially join the National Collaborative for Bio-Preparedness (NCBP), a network which aims improve national preparedness for biohazard-related events.

As part of the agreement, the state of Florida will submit data elements to the National EMS Information System (NEMSIS) to assist in national preparedness efforts and to enhance the state’s ability to visualize data with other layers of data relevance.

The system is designed to display near real-time warnings of unusual situations, such as potential outbreaks, that are of interest to public health, first responders, and law enforcement. It also allows for collaboration among local governments, state governments, and owners of critical infrastructure while providing a means for situational awareness to the national preparedness enterprise.

Steve McCoy, EMS administrator for the Florida Bureau of Emergency Medical Oversight, said the he joined the program because it was the perfect tool that creates actionable information. He added that he planned to incorporate crash data and link it with EMS data and felt there were many uses for the NCBP that have not yet been discovered.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Health Affairs sponsored the development of the NCBP as a way to connect with data owners. Through collaborative participation, data can be analyzed in NEMSIS while allowing data owners the ability to maintain total control of access to their data.