athenahealth Announces to Monitor/Share Population Health Inform from National Health Care Big Data Despite Gov't Shutdown

athenahealth, Inc.

, a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health record (EHR), practice management and care coordination, today announced that in light of the U.S. government shutdown, which has resulted in the furlough of almost 70 percent of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) workforce, it will monitor and share population health information from across its national health care 'big data' asset. athenahealth's network is comprised of clinical, operational and business performance data from nearly 44,000 medical providers and 40 million patient records nationwide. Yesterday, as described in a tweet from CDC Director Tom Frieden (@DrFriedenCDC16h), "CDC had to furlough 8,754 people. They protected you yesterday, can't tomorrow. Microbes/other threats didn't shut down. We are less safe." athenahealth shares Doctor Frieden's concern that the absence