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Information Infrastructure to Support Public Health

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Public Health Informatics and Information Systems

Part of the book series: Health Informatics ((HI))

Abstract

To monitor and protect communities, societies create public health infrastructures. A capable, prepared public health infrastructure consists of robust information and communications technologies (ICT), a skilled public health workforce, and effective organizations. Yet there are numerous challenges facing public health agencies that seek to update and evolve the public health infrastructure, including rapidly changing ICT, increased demands on public health workers, and budget constraints. To meet the challenges facing public health, organizations must implement an information architecture that enables integration across information silos in public health. Organizations must also redesign work processes and system interfaces to support changing work patterns in public health. Finally, public health informaticians must emerge as leaders who can implement and support the evolving public health infrastructure. This chapter defines the public health infrastructure, the challenges facing its implementation, and the core components that will help drive public health organizations to meet current and future information needs.

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Dixon, B.E., Grannis, S.J. (2020). Information Infrastructure to Support Public Health. In: Magnuson, J., Dixon, B. (eds) Public Health Informatics and Information Systems . Health Informatics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41215-9_6

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