Having Information Technology in Public Health

Anastasia Winfield

Week 5 APP

German Gonzalez

MMHA-6265-1

March 29, 2011

Having Information Technology in Public Health

The purpose of this essay is to gain insight on public health and Information Technology and how it interacts. Having the knowledge of why it is pertinent to health care facilities and also what benefits is offered to the public health system. Public health is “created to support specific program area within local and state health departments” (AMIA, 2005) such as newborn screening, birth defects, immunization, communicable disease surveillance and lead poisoning prevention. It is necessary to understand how health care can improve implications between the health care system and Information Technology. This essay will address research on Electronic Support for Public Health (ESP) application, which is a “robust, automated, secure, portable, public health detection and messaging system for cases of notifiable diseases” (PubMed.giv, 2009). By legal binding, the health care organizations are deemed to provide reports of specific diseases to the public health authorities’, having an automated application does however assist with such reports. In order to have a success with the support for public health application, data must be present. “Data must be stored and maintained, so they can be retrieved and used” (John Wiley & Sons, 2009 pp.195) to provide an application the components needed to implement a comprehensive system for public health.

Benefits of the Electronic Support for Public Health includes applying, “disease specific logic to any complete source of electronic medical data in a fully automated process, and supports an optional case management work flow system for case notification control” (PubMed.gov, 2009) and also provides all data transmitted in a secure manner. Having public health surveillance for communicable disease registry is pertinent and needed because it provides a report that will benefit the...