Hospitals & Health Networks reports on NorthShore University HealthSystem’s pioneering project to track illnesses, such as the flu, in the broader  North Shore of Chicago community to arm clinicians with “real-time data to make more informed treatment decisions.”

The initiative had its origins when some physicians studied medication prescriptions among primary-care physicians treating patients with a fever and a cough. The findings: Prescription rates among physicians varied from 18 to 83 percent!

So, it was asked, “”What if physicians could be alerted of ‘what’s going around’ in real-time? Could this encourage more appropriate prescribing habits?”

Thus efforts were made to ” mine patient data, build algorithms and integrate information on ‘what’s going around’ directly into the health system’s EHR. ”