Health IT company athenahealth will use its data to report on the flu and other communicable diseases during the government shutdown. The company  will monitor and share population health information from across its national big data set.

The athenahealth network is composed of clinical, operational and business performance data from nearly 44,000 medical providers and 40 million patient records nationwide.

[See also: athenahealth data shows kid obesity flat.]

The government shutdown, athenahealth executives note in a news release, has resulted in the furlough of almost 70 percent of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workforce.

As described in a recent 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."

"The CDC normally provides weekly reports on flu activity across the country,” Josh Gray, vice president of athenaResearch at athenahealth, said in a news release. “This information is critical to effectively track outbreaks and encourage public vaccination.”

[See also: KLAS ranks athenahealth top in usability.]

"Every season is unpredictable,” Gray added. “We hope the CDC is restored to full capacity as soon as possible. In the meantime we'll leverage athenahealth's cloud-based technology to report on disease patterns across our national network."

athenaResearch's initial flu findings and ongoing monitoring can be found here.