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

Abstract

SummaryObjectives: To survey advances in public health and epidemiology informatics over the past three years. Methods: We conducted a review of English-language research works conducted in the domain of public health informatics (PHI), and published in MEDLINE between January 2012 and December 2014, where information and communication technology (ICT) was a primary subject, or a main component of the study methodology. Selected articles were synthesized using a thematic analysis using the Essential Services of Public Health as a typology. Results: Based on themes that emerged, we organized the advances into a model where applications that support the Essential Services are, in turn, supported by a socio-technical infrastructure that relies on government policies and ethical principles. That infrastructure, in turn, depends upon education and training of the public health workforce, development that creates novel or adapts existing infrastructure, and research that evaluates the success of the infrastructure. Finally, the persistence and growth of infrastructure depends on financial sustainability.

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

“…Similar to this research, Dixon and colleagues examined the public health informatics literature from 2012 to 2014 to identify advances in public health informatics [4]. In order to identify trends in themes across the 2011 AMIA Public Health Informatics Agenda, we compared themes captured in this literature review with the previous effort.…”

“…Use of MeSH headings was preferred, although articles were also identified using keywords to check article titles and abstracts. The search strategy we used was similar to that of Dixon et al [4] based on the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook to select candidate "best papers" [5]. Search terms used in the Web of Science were similar to the MeSH headings.…”

“…One key area discussed at the AMIA Spring Congress in 2011 was sustainability along with recommendations to develop public health informatics as a priority in state and local health departments [4]. Because of the current political and economic environment, resources are often spread across many competing demands in public health agencies [13].…”

“…Because much of what public health is concerned with overlaps with population health, and there are opportunities to learn from the published literature in population health, we included these articles in our review. Figure 1 depicts the relationship between the scope of informatics and the intersection within the fields of global health informatics, population health informatics, and public health informatics [4]. This article discusses public health informatics in the context of the five tracks from the 2011 American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Public Health Informatics Agenda and relates the literature reviewed to overarching themes emerging from the 2011 meeting.…”

Public Health and Epidemiology Informatics

“…A new section on this specific topic has been integrated in the IMIA Yearbook in 2015. An overview of the area covered by Public Health Informatics is presented in the Dixon et al paper [1]. In 2016, the term Precision Public Health started to appear in several publications [2,3].…”