Research Center of Excellence in Public Informatics

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We propose to create the Public Health Informatics, Decision-support, Evaluation, Analysis, and Surveillance (IDEAS) Center. Its theme will be system alignment and data integration to support the public health functions of preparedness, evaluation, surveillance, analysis, decision-making, and response. The Center will be housed in the Department of Medical Informatics at the University of Utah, which is one of four National Library of Medicine (NLM)/Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Public Health Informatics training program site. It will bring together academia, state and local health departments, integrated health care delivery systems, a successful Community Health Information Network (CHIN) and developing Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO), and myriad local, regional, and national public health and clinical data resources. The Center will unite the pursuit of state of the art research into public health informatics with a network of investigators, public health leaders and practitioners, hospital and clinic health care providers, computer scientists, and healthcare and community leaders. The research aims of the Public Health IDEAS Center address key problems in public health, clinical care, and public health informatics. We will develop and evaluate methods to improve accuracy of data linkage of patient records from multiple data sources and locations through probabilistic matching. The challenge of coordinating public health and health care system responses to threats to patient safety will be investigated. Reporting and monitoring functions of public health will be matched with education and quality improvement activities, using surveillance and analytic tools that are based on linked patient data. We will implement information technologies that support communication between providers and public health personnel, enhance decision-making capacity, and improve the efficiency of retrieval of data for investigation of infectious disease and other public health related events. Finally, we will develop and apply advanced modeling, simulation, and geographic information systems to better inform public health policy- and decisionmaking, not just for situations of high uncertainty and high risk, but also to improve control of more familiar infections. Our driving goal is to generate research findings that are widely generalizable for public health and its health care partners at the local, state, and national levels.