Communities of Pediatric Care and Practice

The impact of Hurricane Katrina in 20051 on health care infrastructures abruptly clarified the need for and value of “anytime, anywhere” access to health information by health care providers during disasters. The development of Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) to meet that need has faced and continues to face technical, business, and adaptive challenges in creating sustainable child health information systems. Key issues in HIE development for child health are the inclusion of pediatric-specific data and guardian-related privacy/security issues. As HIE developers address these issues in designing regional information systems, experts in both child health and informatics must be included in the planning and implementation to achieve successful development, diffusion, and sustainability of HIEs.