An informatics agenda for public health: summarized recommendations from the 2011 AMIA PHI Conference.

The AMIA Public Health Informatics 2011 Conference brought together members of the public health and health informatics communities to revisit the national agenda developed at the AMIA Spring Congress in 2001, assess the progress that has been made in the past decade, and develop recommendations to further guide the field. Participants met in five discussion tracks: technical framework; research and evaluation; ethics; education, professional training, and workforce development; and sustainability. Participants identified 62 recommendations, which clustered into three key themes related to the need to (1) enhance communication and information sharing within the public health informatics community, (2) improve the consistency of public health informatics through common public health terminologies, rigorous evaluation methodologies, and competency-based training, and (3) promote effective coordination and leadership that will champion and drive the field forward.

An integrated information system for all-hazards health preparedness and response: New York State Health Emergency Response Data System.

Effective and timely exchange of information among healthcare, state and local public health, and other health emergency response partners is essential to all-hazards emergency preparedness and response. Since fall of 2001, NY State Department of Health has partnered with the healthcare and public health community in New York to implement a statewide Health Emergency Response Data System to meet this need. During this time, it has been used in a wide range of preparedness and response applications including regional and local exercises, surveillance, health facility asset tracking, and response to actual health events.

Dead crow density and West Nile virus monitoring, New York.

New York State used the health commerce system to monitor the number of West Nile virus (WNV) human disease cases and the density of dead crows. In each year from 2001 to 2003 and for the 3 years combined, persons living in New York counties (excluding New York City) with elevated weekly dead crow densities (above a threshold value of 0.1 dead crows per square mile) had higher risk (2.

A national agenda for public health informatics.

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.

West Nile virus: a case study in how NY State Health Information infrastructure facilitates preparation and response to disease outbreaks.

New York's (NY) Health Information Network (HIN) provided timely access to West Nile Virus (WNV) data during the initial outbreak in the late Summer 1999. In December 1999, NY developed a plan to deal with WNV in 2000 that required an integrated surveillance system for humans, birds, mammals, and mosquitoes. The HIN infrastructure allowed NY to deploy this system statewide in three months.