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Bill would allow sharing deidentified EMS overdose data with ODMAP to spot spikes in near real time
Summary
Director Jeremy Drucker presented an agency bill to permit the Office of Emergency Medical Services to share deidentified emergency medical services data with the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP). The committee referred House File 1429 to the Judiciary, Finance and Civil Law Committee.
The committee heard an agency bill on March 10 to authorize sharing deidentified emergency medical services (EMS) overdose data with the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP), a near real‑time overdose tracking tool used by other states.
Jeremy Drucker, director of the state Office of Addiction and Recovery, told the committee the measure responds to a need for timelier, geographically precise overdose information to spot local spikes and coordinate rapid public health and safety responses. "When we do have really solid real time data, we can spot patterns like if there's a particularly, dangerous drug batch," Drucker said, describing ODMAP as a dashboard that tracks overdoses by ZIP code and can prompt faster distribution of naloxone and public alerts.
What the bill would do: The measure authorizes the Office of Emergency Medical Services to share deidentified EMS patient care report data with ODMAP, including location and time of incident, whether naloxone was administered, whether the overdose was fatal or nonfatal, and indicators of substances involved. The bill specifies that no personal identifying information would be shared and that access to the ODMAP dashboard is restricted to authorized users such as first responders, public health personnel and law enforcement.
Office of Emergency Medical Services Director Dylan Ferguson told the committee the office currently receives patient care report data from ambulances in a central repository, but that the data are classified under Minnesota law as nonpublic. "This gives us the ability to be able to share the data from all of the ambulance services that are reported to us," Ferguson said. He added that some ambulance services currently enter incidents directly into ODMAP, but the change would remove duplicative reporting by enabling the state data feed to update ODMAP automatically on a 24‑hour schedule.
Why it matters: The bill follows practices in more than 20 other states that supply EMS data to ODMAP and is designed to give public health and public safety partners earlier warning of emerging drug supply threats. Committee members and witnesses emphasized safeguards: shared data would be deidentified, only include limited incident-level fields, and be accessible only to verified, authorized users.
Action taken: Representative Fueled by sponsor Liebling and the director's presentation, the committee adopted the motion to refer House File 1429 to the Judiciary, Finance and Civil Law Committee by voice vote.
Outstanding questions: Some members asked why the bill uses permissive language ("may share") rather than mandatory language. Directors said the language reflects a permissive authority to allow data sharing under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act; implementation steps and user authorization remain to be resolved in subsequent drafting and implementation planning.
Provenance: The bill was introduced as an agency bill by Director Jeremy Drucker (transcript excerpt: "What this bill would do is it'll allow sharing of deidentified EMS data with ODMAP"), and the committee referred House File 14 29 to the Judiciary, Finance and Civil Law Committee following questions and discussion (transcript excerpt: "The motion prevails and house file 14 29 is referred to the committee on civil law and judiciary.").
