An informatics agenda for public health: summarized recommendations from the 2011 AMIA PHI Conference

Abstract

The AMIA Public Health Informatics 2011 Conference brought together members of the public health and health informatics communities to revisit the national agenda developed at the AMIA Spring Congress in 2001, assess the progress that has been made in the past decade, and develop recommendations to further guide the field. Participants met in five discussion tracks: technical framework; research and evaluation; ethics; education, professional training, and workforce development; and sustainability. Participants identified 62 recommendations, which clustered into three key themes related to the need to (1) enhance communication and information sharing within the public health informatics community, (2) improve the consistency of public health informatics through common public health terminologies, rigorous evaluation methodologies, and competency-based training, and (3) promote effective coordination and leadership that will champion and drive the field forward. The agenda and recommendations from the meeting will be disseminated and discussed throughout the public health and informatics communities. Both communities stand to gain much by working together to use these recommendations to further advance the application of information technology to improve health.

Characterizing Informatics Roles and Needs of Public Health Workers

“…We selected the subset of core public health competencies that overlap the greatest with previously defined PHI competencies. 2,23,24 <Insert Figure-1…”

“…During the first decade, PHI activities were characterized by a primary focus on automating surveillance. 2 Today PHI contributes to many areas of public health, including but not limited to the following activities: 1) implementation of electronic health record (EHR) systems and health information exchange (HIE) to enable successful achievement of "meaningful use" criteria such as electronic reporting of notifiable diseases [3][4][5] ; 2) measurement of a wider array of health indicators, including social determinants through "big data" analysis of multiple community data sources 6,7 ; and 3) development, implementation, and assessment of patient-centered technologies aimed at supporting health and wellbeing in the changing landscape of health care delivery. [8][9][10] To receive data from EHR systems and HIE networks; interact 'bi-directionally' with providers and patients; and, monitor population health using increasingly 'Big' and complex multi-source data streams, public health agencies need to invest in PHI systems as well as workers.…”

Translating next generation sequencing to practice: Opportunities and necessary steps

“…The growth of bioinformatics or computational genomics makes it clear that, in the near future, the concern will not be so much with stored biological samples but with digitalized samples—electronic data that can be stored, transmitted, and analyzed with new ease and power. It is important for institutions to consider policies surrounding the use of genetic information (Massoudi et al., 2011). These processes should address data collection and management, encryption, destruction of specimens and/or genetic information, and loss of data.…”

Public Health, Population Health, and Epidemiology Informatics: Recent Research and Trends in the United States

“…In 2011 at its Spring Congress meeting, AMIA updated its 2001 agenda to further advance the field of public health informatics [6,7]. Participants at the meeting self-selected into one of five tracks: (1) technical framework; (2) research and evaluation; (3) ethics; (4) education, professional training, and workforce development; and (5) sustainability.…”