Global health crises are also information crises: A call to action

Abstract

In this opinion paper, we argue that global health crises are also information crises. Using as an example the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, we (a) examine challenges associated with what we term "global information crises"; (b) recommend changes needed for the field of information science to play a leading role in such crises; and (c) propose actionable items for short-and long-term research, education, and practice in information science.

Recomendaciones de «hacer» y «no hacer» en el tratamiento de los pacientes críticos ante la pandemia por coronavirus causante de COVID-19 de los Grupos de Trabajo de la Sociedad Española de Medicina Intensiva, Crítica y Unidades Coronarias (SEMICYUC)

“…Dado que la existencia de una gran presión asistencial puede dificultar el acceso a los sistemas de información clínica habituales, motivada por la posible desproporción entre los casos atendidos y los recursos disponibles, debe asegurarse disponer de la documentación clínica adecuada, en forma de historia clínica, gráfica, prescripción y registro de medicación en el formato establecido (49). Recomendación 3: administra terapias experimentales dentro de estudios y siguiendo las recomendaciones.…”

Ebola, Zika, Corona…What Is Next for Our World?

“…Providing people of all nations with accurate and truthful public health and medical information will help create greater awareness and trust while simultaneously reducing the burden of misinformation and panic that may accompany global pandemics. Unfortunately, working to improve this determinant of global public health will be difficult because social and mass media are controlled, utilized, and protected differently around the world with an added burden of lack of free press in many regions [20][21][22][23].…”

“…In response to pandemics like COVID-19, technological approaches to improving public health awareness, medical surveillance, artificial intelligence, big data generation, and telemedicine should be researched further to enhance their efficacy, reach, acceptability, and affordability [22,23]. Of particular concern are the poor and marginalized populations around the world who have lower levels of education and suffer the most from a global digital divide.…”

“…As we discussed previously, such populations are also the most negatively and profoundly impacted by infectious disease outbreaks. Hence, special attention, comprehensive outreach, and low-cost means will be needed to help these populations access valid and reliable sources of health-related information and digital healthcare services [11,18,[20][21][22][23].…”

“…The areas of concern for primary care in dealing with pandemics such as COVID-19 are many and remain ubiquitous across nations and regions [24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. These concerns include the lack of personal protective and basic medical care equipment; limited financial reserves and clinical capacity; rural-urban and geographic disparities; patients and practices with limited access to reliable and high speed Internet; fractured connections between public health services and emergency care; patient level factors such as inability to pay and low literacy; medical mistrust and treatment adherence issues; shrinking physician interest in general practice and growing demand for specialists; lack of emphasis on preventive screenings and vaccination; absence of interdisciplinary and integrated functions and systems; disparities in investment between horizontal and vertical programs; poor infrastructure and human resource depletion; inadequate compensation and low competence of professionals; absence of benchmarks and continuing education; lack of care coordination and information flow; issues of ethics and professionalism among providers; diverse models of care and compensation; functional weaknesses and poor social participation; conflict between community level gatekeeping and centralized care; lack of administrative support and leadership in primary care; lack of regulations for providers and paying mechanisms; and public versus private approaches to primary care [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Global political leaders and public health experts will need to collaborate and strategize to address each of these important issues with a multipronged approach, keeping in view the other "Ps".…”