Sounds like patient privacy under HIPAA is what is really getting in the way of the public health response, not the old technologies.
The hell it is. Problem here is departments not knowing how to talk to each other and crappy data handling. Fax and email are plenty fast, when used by people who actually know their job.
Getting the government as f@r away as possible from medicine would improve things drastically.
The truth is that state and county governments are full of incompetent nepotism hires. It is also full of over educated morons that can’t find their ass with both hands and another bunch that got government jobs they have no interest in because it is a guaranteed paycheck, insurance and pension and you don’t really have to work too hard nor is any really creative problems solving required.
It’s not like they will get fired for being useless sucks like they would in the private sector. They always blame the computer system for their failures.