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Rita Kukafka, DrPH, MA, Departments of Sociomedical Sciences and Biomedical Informatics, Columbia Unversity, Mailman School of Public Health and College of Physicians and Surgeons, 722 West 168th Street, Suite 1121, New York, NY 10032, 212-305-9193, rita.kukafka@dbmi.columbia.edu
In recent years, the nation's attention has been focused on the vital need for a strong public health infrastructure and for the nation to build a 21st century health support system. Informatics and information technology hold the promise for such a system –one that can help realize public health’s mission in surveillance, disease prevention and health promotion for the population as a whole. The systematic application of informatics theories and methods to public health practice and research has led to innovative technology architectures that conform to communications requirements, and data standards, which are necessary to permit inter-organizational information sharing and for linking of personal health data with public health information. While such efforts are still early, public health practice now supports real-time public health surveillance systems to detect bioterrorism and natural disasters. Other public health informatics applications have led to analyzing, formalizing, and modeling preferences and information needs of patients, families and consumers, and to methods that integrate these preferences and needs into health promotion and research activities. Yet despite an escalation of informatics driven demonstration projects over recent years, in many areas of the country disease surveillance and public health practice on the whole has changed little since the nineteenth century. Critical challenges must be surmounted if informatics is to fulfill its promise of transforming public health. This presentation explains public health informatics, provides examples of public health informatics applications, and discusses some of the most fundamental challenges.
Learning Objectives:
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.