Public health surveillance has benefitted from, and has often pioneered, informatics analyses and solutions. However, the field of informatics also serves other facets of public health including emergency response, environmental health, nursing, and administration. Public health informatics has been defined as the systematic application of information and computer science and technology to public health practice, research, and learning (1). It is an interdisciplinary profession that applies mathematics, engineering, information science, and related social sciences (e.g., decision analysis) to important public health problems and processes. Public health informatics is a subdomain of the larger field known as biomedical or health informatics. Health informatics is not synonymous with the term health information technology (IT). Although the concept of health IT encompasses the use of technology in the field of health care, one can think of health informatics as defining the science, the how and why, behind health IT. For example, health IT professionals should be able to resolve infrastructure problems with a network connection, whereas trained public health informaticians should be able to support public health decisions by facilitating the availability of timely, relevant, and high-quality information. In other words, they should always be able to provide advice on methods for achieving a public health goal faster, better, or at a lower cost by leveraging computer science, information science, or technology.
This report proposes a vision for informatics in enhancing public health surveillance, identifies challenges and opportunities, and suggests approaches to attain the vision. This topic was identified by CDC leadership as one of six major concerns that must be addressed by the public health community to advance public health surveillance in the 21st century. The six topics were discussed by CDC workgroups that were convened as part of the 2009 Surveillance Consultation to advance public health surveillance to meet continuing and new challenges (2). Although this report is not based on workgroup discussions, it is intended to continue the conversations with the public health community for a shared vision for public health surveillance in the 21st century.
The work of public health informatics can be divided into three categories. First is the study and description of complex systems (e.g., models of disease transmission or public health nursing work flow). Second is the identification of opportunities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public health systems through innovative data collection or use of information. Third is the implementation and maintenance of processes and systems to achieve such improvements.
The informatics perspective can provide insights and opportunities to improve each of the seven ongoing elements of any public health surveillance system (3). Examples include the following:

• Planning and system design – Identifying information and sources that best address a surveillance goal; identifying who will access information, by what methods and under what conditions; and improving analysis or action by improving the surveillance system interaction with other information systems.
• Data collection – Identifying potential bias associated with different collection methods (e.g., telephone use or cultural attitudes toward technology); identifying appropriate use of structured data compared with free text, most useful vocabulary, and data standards; and recommending technologies (e.g., global positioning systems and radio-frequency identification) to support easier, faster, and higher-quality data entry in the field.
• Data management and collation – Identifying ways to share data across different computing/technology platforms; linking new data with data from legacy systems; and identifying and remedying data-quality problems while ensuring data privacy and security.
• Analysis – Identifying appropriate statistical and visualization applications; generating algorithms to alert users to aberrations in health events; and leveraging high-performance computational resources for large data sets or complex analyses.
• Interpretation – Determining usefulness of comparing information from one surveillance program with other data sets (related by time, place, person, or condition) for new perspectives and combining data of other sources and quality to provide a context for interpretation.
• Dissemination – Recommending appropriate displays of information for users and the best methods to reach the intended audience; facilitating information finding; and identifying benefits for data providers.
• Application to public health programs – Assessing the utility of having surveillance data directly flow into information systems that support public health interventions and information elements or standards that facilitate this linkage of surveillance to action and improving access to and use of information produced by a surveillance system for workers in the field and health-care providers.

The evolving field of surveillance informatics presents both challenges and opportunities. The challenges include finding efficient and effective ways of combining multiple sources of complex data and information into meaningful and actionable knowledge (e.g., for situational awareness). As these challenges are met, opportunities will arise for faster, better, and lower cost surveillance and interpretation of health events and trends. The domain of public health informatics designs and evaluates methods appropriate for this complex environment.

futher detail : http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6103a5.htm

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