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PubMed2004

Developing health website quality assessment guidelines for the voluntary sector: outcomes from the Judge Project.

BACKGROUND: This paper describes the Judge project, the aim of which was to explore the need for health website quality assessment guidelines for the voluntary sector. Such guidelines would enable health consumers to assess the quality of health sites and assist support groups to produce their own good quality sites. The project was a partnership between the Information Management Research Institute, School of Informatics, Northumbria University and Contact a Family. It was supported by the Health Foundation. METHODS: The views of health consumers and support group members and workers were obtained by focus groups (35 attendees) and questionnaires (55 responses). They were asked questions about quality issues and concerns about Internet health information and any help they needed with judging the quality of health websites. RESULTS: The results supported the need for guidelines. The guidelines were written to reflect the requirements of health consumers and support groups articulated from the focus group and questionnaire data. They were then disseminated via a website. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need to improve communication and information exchange between health consumers and professionals and official organizations; publicise support groups to patients and carers; set up local Webs of Trust, linking together voluntary and statutory organizations within a locality. Professionals and official organizations in the public sector should make information provision to patients and health consumers a priority. Information provision should be embedded in the clinical setting via guidelines, protocols and administrative structures. Professionals should be trained in the role of information and how to provide it in appropriate ways. Support groups should use the Judge guidelines to assist them in producing good quality websites. Support groups should promote the Judge guidelines to health consumers, to help them make their own quality judgement about health-information websites.

Community Participation↗

PubMed2004

Evolution of a child health profile initiative.

While information technology has proliferated and advanced dramatically in the last 10 years, the application of information technology to health care policy and delivery has not been well coordinated either among public health agencies or between the public and private health sectors. In 1998, the Genetic Services Branch, Division of Services for Children with Special Health Needs, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA/MCHB) began an initiative to help facilitate assessment and prompt provision of appropriate services to improve the health of children. Twenty-five state public health programs received grants to improve integration of newborn screening and genetic services systems with other maternal and child health systems. All Kids Count--a program of the Public Health Informatics Institute--completed a qualitative assessment of state programs that were funded to develop plans for integration. The results are being translated into a business/policy case addressing the need for integration, a description of essential functions that such systems support, ultimately system requirements, and measures for evaluation. HRSA/MCHB's partnership with All Kids Count continues with a project to develop a community of practice to assist programs in moving their integrated child health information systems forward.

Child↗

PubMed2006

Preparing our public health nursing leaders with informatics skills to combat bioterrorism in the United States.

Our public health nursing leaders are practicing in a new world responding to terrorism and other threats to our nation's health. Informatics solutions provide a viable opportunity to respond to new pressures on the public health system, changes in healthcare delivery, and improvements in information technology. Informatics competencies for public health workers in the United States have been developed by a working group sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These competencies provide the framework in which to design a series of activities prepared exclusively to meet the needs of our public health nursing leaders using contemporary informatics tools and solutions. Many of these leaders graduated during an era where informatics was not recognized as a necessary component of their curriculum The completion of this proposed futuristic curriculum will allow our public health nursing leaders to work more efficiently and provide greater influence on public policy.

Bioterrorism↗

PubMed2003

The role of the private sector in monitoring health care quality and patient safety.

BACKGROUND: As payers, purchasers, and providers, both the public and private sectors have a stake in developing sound methods of measuring health care quality and patient safety. However, the role of the private sector in a national quality monitoring system remains largely underdeveloped. PRIVATE SECTOR ROLE IN HEALTH CARE QUALITY MONITORING: There have been some attempts to pool private-sector data through health care industry efforts to measure and monitor the quality of health care services. Yet despite a number of public/private partnerships, no standard method exists for measuring and monitoring health care quality and safety across public and private payers. THE AHRQ WORKSHOP ON PRIVATE-SECTOR QUALITY MONITORING: The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) sponsored a workshop in fall 2000 to address the private sector's role in monitoring quality in the health care system. National experts developed a conceptual framework and recommendations on the design and scope of a private-sector data monitoring system. Ten key attributes of the monitoring system, such as timeliness of reports, flexibility, efficiency, and linkability, were identified. Barriers and gaps to the development of such a system include the cost of data collection, the diversity of the units of data collection, data privacy, and limitations of administrative data elements. SUMMARY: A comprehensive, public/private data collection system would address the multidimensional nature of quality and use data to effectively represent this complexity to the extent possible.

Consensus Statements as Topic↗

PubMed2006

Progress and challenges of ubiquitous informatics in health care.

Ubiquitous informatics in health care can be seen as its pervasively presence everywhere, at home as well as in office and patient room, for various purposes such as patient follow up, health care professional training, aid to decision making and to public health management. Its worldwide rapid extension could only happen in relation to major progresses such as overall availability of personal computers, diffusion through the worldwide web as well as coverage of almost all fields of medicine. Challenges include a profound change in patient-physician relationship, a reform in health care management and financial methods, as well as the need to identify uniquely all healthcare partners, while respecting confidentiality and private life.

Belgium↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Mentorship and competencies for applied chronic disease epidemiology.

To understand the potential and establish a framework for mentoring as a method to develop professional competencies of state-level applied chronic disease epidemiologists, model mentorship programs were reviewed, specific competencies were identified, and competencies were then matched to essential public health services. Although few existing mentorship programs in public health were identified, common themes in other professional mentorship programs support the potential of mentoring as an effective means to develop capacity for applied chronic disease epidemiology. Proposed competencies for chronic disease epidemiologists in a mentorship program include planning, analysis, communication, basic public health, informatics and computer knowledge, and cultural diversity. Mentoring may constitute a viable strategy to build chronic disease epidemiology capacity, especially in public health agencies where resource and personnel system constraints limit opportunities to recruit and hire new staff.

Chronic Disease↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Public health 101 for informaticians.

Abstract Public health is a complex discipline that has contributed substantially to improving the health of the population. Public health action involves a variety of interventions and methods, many of which are now taken for granted by the general public. The specific focus and nature of public health interventions continue to evolve, but the fundamental principles of public health remain stable. These principles include a focus on the health of the population rather than of individuals; an emphasis on disease prevention rather than treatment; a goal of intervention at all vulnerable points in the causal pathway of disease, injury, or disability; and operation in a governmental rather than a private context. Public health practice occurs at local, state, and federal levels and involves various professional disciplines. Public health principles and practice are illustrated by a case study example of neural tube defects and folic acid. The application of information science and technology in public health practice provides previously unfathomed opportunities to improve the health of the population. Clinical informaticians and others in the health care system are crucial partners in addressing the challenges and opportunities offered by public health informatics.

Birth Certificates↗

PubMed2005

Complementary competencies: public health and health sciences librarianship.

OBJECTIVES: The authors sought to identify opportunities for partnership between the communities of public health workers and health sciences librarians. METHODS: The authors review competencies in public health and health sciences librarianship. They highlight previously identified public health informatics competencies and the Medical Library Association's essential areas of knowledge. Based on points of correspondence between the two domains, the authors identify specific opportunities for partnership. RESULTS: The points of correspondence between public health and health sciences librarianship are reflected in several past projects involving both communities. These previous collaborations and the services provided by health sciences librarians at many public health organizations suggest that some health sciences librarians may be considered full members of the public health workforce. Opportunities remain for productive collaboration between public health workers and health sciences librarians. CONCLUSIONS: Drawing on historical and contemporary experience, this paper presents an initial framework for forming collaborations between health sciences librarians and members of the public health workforce. This framework may stimulate thinking about how to form additional partnerships between members of these two communities.

Community-Institutional Relations↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Bridges between health care research evidence and clinical practice.

Research is producing increasing amounts of important new evidence for health care, but there is a large gap between what this evidence shows can be done and the care that most patients actually receive. An important reason for this gap is the extensive processing that evidence requires before application. This article discusses a three-step model for bridging research evidence to management of clinical problems: getting the evidence straight, formulating evidence-based clinical policies, and applying evidence-based clinical policies at the right place and time. This model is purposely broad in scope and provides a framework for coordinating efforts to support evidence-based medical care. The authors' purpose is to represent the roles of health informatics in the context of the roles of all the key players, including health care researchers and practitioners, health care organizations, and the public. Health informatics has already made important contributions to bridging evidence to practice, including improving evidence retrieval, evaluation, and synthesis; new evidence-based information products; and computerized aids for facilitating the use of these products during clinical decision making. However, much more innovation and coordination are needed. The authors call for health informaticians to pay balanced attention to 1) the quality of evidence embodied in information innovations, 2) the performance of technologies and systems that retrieve, prepare, disseminate, and apply evidence, and 3) the fit of information tools to the specific clinical circumstances in which evidence is to be applied. Effective interdisciplinary teams that include health services researchers and other evidence experts, clinical practitioners, informaticians, and health care managers are needed to achieve success. Informaticians can make increasingly important contributions to the transfer of health care research by joining such teams.

Decision Making, Organizational↗

PubMed2005

[Information system in primary health care].

The Croatian Ministry of Health started a health care system computerization project aimed at strengthening the collaboration among health care institutions, expert groups and individual health care providers. A tender for informatic system for Primary Health Care (PHC) general practice, pediatrics and gynecology, a vital prerequisite for project realization, has now been closed. Some important reasons for undertaking the project include rationalization of drug utilization, savings through a reduced use of specialists, consultants and hospitalization, then achievement of better cooperation, work distribution, result linking, data quality improvement (by standardization), and ensuring proper information-based decision making. Keeping non-standardized and thus difficult to process data takes too much time of the PHC team time. Since, however, a vast amount of data are collected on only a few indicators, some important information may remain uncovered. Although decisions made by health authorities should rely on evidence and processed information, the authorities spend most of the time working with raw data from which their decisions ultimately derive. The Informatic Technology (IT) in PHC is expected to enable a different approach. PHC teams should be relieved from the tedious task of data gathering and the authorities enabled to work with the information rather than data. The Informatics Communication Technology (ICT) system consists of three parts: hardware (5000 personal computers for work over the Internet), operative system with basic software (editor, etc.), and PHC software for PHC teams. At the national level (National Public Health Informatics System), a software platform will be built for data collection, analysis and distribution. This data collection will be based on the International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC-2) standard to ensure the utilization of medical records and quality assessment. The system permits bi-directional data exchange between a central database and sources at different levels, across the spectrum from basic PHC teams to local authorities. This will enable data collection control, comparisons with national averages and prompt distribution of information over the Internet. The investment into IT is a strategic imperative having no alternative. A cost/benefit analysis has shown its operation in the PHC system to return the investment in two years. As defined according to the Project priorities (with measurable objectives), the use of new technologies will be introduced by stages.

Croatia↗

PubMedDate not supplied

A database for tracking toxicogenomic samples and procedures.

Reproductive toxicogenomic studies generate large amounts of toxicological and genomic data. On the toxicology side, a substantial quantity of data accumulates from conventional endpoints such as histology, reproductive physiology and biochemistry. The largest source of genomics data is DNA microarrays, which generate enormous amounts of information in the course of profiling gene expression. Thus, data storage and management become essential and require a more sophisticated system than lab notebooks and electronic spreadsheets. We developed a database for tracking toxicogenomic samples and procedures (TSP 1.0) for our reproductive studies based on the MIAME-Tox guidelines and relational database theory. This database stores the various types of data from both toxicological and genomic assays in a hierarchical fashion. The user-friendly interface provides easy procedures for researchers to add, edit, save, delete, and navigate different records. Finally, TSP facilitates exporting microarray data into public databases.

Database Management Systems↗

PubMed2002

Improving information access for public health professionals.

Fundamental to our protection against biological weapons and the detection of disease outbreaks is the need to strengthen our surveillance systems. Improved electronic communications between local, state, and federal public health agencies provide a way for health officials to share information on unusual disease outbreaks and provide important health alert information. This article describes a model of a partnership between a regional medical library of the National Library of Medicine, a school of public health, and federally qualified community health centers. This project upgraded technology and provided public health professional training on Internet information and resources for local public health agencies.

Bioterrorism↗

PubMed2003

The news and you.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Alternative Splicing↗

PubMed2005

Confidentiality and confidence: is data aggregation a means to achieve both?

The recent adoption of electronic technologies for use in management of personal health data have been accompanied by a commensurate level of concern about privacy. Public health authorities have been able to continue their full access to personal information, while restricting the information given to academic health researchers through the practice of aggregation. Through this band-aid strategy, there is a very real potential that critical pieces of information are missing for the purposes of research. While this might be a logical sacrifice in order to preserve individual privacy, quantitative analysis of the privacy gained through this method of aggregation shows that little, if any, benefit is achieved. If aggregation were the sole available means to reach the aims of both privacy and research, then further analysis of the practice of aggregation would be unnecessary. Yet suitable privacy protection techniques abound, enabling academic research to progress while adding true protection to individual health information.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Towards collation and modelling of the global cost of armed violence on civilians.

A method is described which translates qualitative reports about armed violence into meaningful quantitative data allowing an evidence-based approach to the causes and effects of the global health impact of armed violence on unarmed people. Analysis of 100 randomly selected news reports shows that the type of weapon used, the psychological aspect of the violence, the number of weapons in use and the victims' vulnerability independently influence the mortality of victims. Data collated by the same method could be analysed together with indicators of poverty, development and health so illuminating the relationship between such indicators and degradation of peoples' physical security through acts of armed violence. The method could also help uphold the laws of war and human rights.

Communications Media↗

PubMed2002

The Washington state "name-to-code" HIV reporting system: a public health perspective.

The advent of highly active anti-retroviral treatment for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in the mid-1990s, along with other new developments in HIV understanding, epidemiology, and care, led local and state public health officials to recommend to the Washington State Board of Health in 1996 that asymptomatic HIV infection be added to the list of conditions reportable to public health by name. A controversy over reporting followed that lasted over two years. Although a "name-to-code" compromise had been suggested early on, it gained acceptance only after key stakeholders faced substantial public health, medical, and general community opposition to unique identifier reporting. This article describes the processes of adopting HIV reporting in Washington State, the nature of the reporting system, and how the issues were ultimately resolved.

Decision Making, Organizational↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Establishing a statewide mammography database in Arkansas: overcoming the barriers.

To determine patterns of mammography utilization in Arkansas, the Arkansas Mammography Data Collection Project (MDCP) was established. The project's objective was to compile into one database statewide information about mammograms performed. All mammography centers were invited to participate in the project. Many barriers were encountered that were center related, data related, or personnel related; different interventions were implemented for each barrier. At the conclusion of the project, 92 out of 112 centers (82%) participated in the project, creating a database of 157,976 mammography data sets. Identifying and overcoming many of the barriers were crucial steps in the project's success.

Arkansas↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Developing a web-based data mining application to impact community health improvement initiatives: the Virginia Atlas of Community Health.

This article describes how a team from the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) and the Virginia Center for Healthy Communities (VCHC) attended the UNC Management Academy for Public Health to learn skills to address Virginia's commitment to using technology to improve the public's health. After creating a business plan for a food-safety information Web site, team members used that experience as well as Management Academy training in information technology, the management of data and finances, and strategic partnering to create a comprehensive tool with which to place customizable population data in the hands of anyone interested in pursuing population health improvement. The Virginia Atlas of Community Health, launched through the VCHC in 2003, places clear, compelling data in the hands of those who can influence decisions at the local level and create the most impact for health. Since the program's inception, more than 2,000 individuals have registered as ongoing users of the Virginia Atlas. Initially funded by a Turning Point grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the program is sustained through a series of smaller grants and funding from the VDH.

Atlases as Topic↗