A National Agenda for Public Health Informatics

Abstract

The American Medical Informatics Association 2001 Spring Congress brought together the public health and informatics communities to develop a national agenda for public health informatics. Discussions on funding and governance; architecture and infrastructure; standards and vocabulary; research, evaluation, and best practices; privacy, confidentiality, and security; and training and workforce resulted in 74 recommendations with two key themes: (1) all stakeholders need to be engaged in coordinated activities related to public health information architecture, standards, confidentiality, best practices, and research and (2) informatics training is needed throughout the public health workforce. Implementation of this consensus agenda will help promote progress in the application of information technology to improve public health.

National Health Information Infrastructure Model: A Milestone for Health Information Management Education Realignment

“…Public health encompass a wide range of services, including communicable disease control, lead poisoning prevention, vital registration, injury control, newborn screening, immunization, and surveillance. [34][35][36][37] Effective public health practice requires timely, accurate, and authoritative information to identify public health threats, to assess population health, to focus programs and policies on well-defined health problems, to evaluate programs and services, to conduct research to address health issues, and to perform other essential public health services. Therefore, information access is of critical importance for the practice of public health, such that the need for informatics development has been recognized within all public health domains.…”

The Public Health Infrastructure and Our Nation's Health

“…Further, information and communications systems, though growing in sophistication and geographic coverage, do not operate seamlessly across the continuum of federal, state, and local authorities (73). Finally, especially at the local level, public health still lacks a verified set of standards and criteria for performance; and, in part for that very reason, local agencies remain a low priority for policy makers, are unevenly staffed, and are organized on models based on historical circumstance and antiquated laws rather than on efficiency or effectiveness criteria.…”

Basic concepts in medical informatics

“…In a recent paper outlining an agenda for developing this branch of informatics, Yasnoff et al 30 argued for the need to construct, implement, and integrate public health surveillance systems at national and local levels, to enable rapid identification and response to disease hotspots (and more topically, bioterrorism). As Yasnoff rightly points out, methods of assessing costs and benefits of such systems are needed.…”