Question

Discuss information technology~ collection, modeling, and surveillance of disease agents.

1. Expound on one of the following disease and the use of technology in disease surveillance:

The flu epidemic, Malaria, Measles, Zika Virus, HIV, Typhoid, or other globally impacting disease. What goals/procedures would you recommend in the event of a global epidemic?

2. What roles do social inequality and absolute poverty have as determinants of health?   What roles does information technology play in global public health? (May need to give examples)

3. What is the role of computers in modeling natural disasters? What is the healthcare professional's responsibility in disasters (natural and human-made) such as Hurricane Katrina and the Deep Horizon oil spill?

Course: Healthcare Automation and Technology

Answer 1

1.

The surveillance system that is ideal for malaria and its elimination includes rapid and complete case reporting, implementation of associated data like health survey information, central information storage and its management, automated data analysis and the outputs that are customized accompanied by the feedbacks leading to targeted responses. The malaria elimination programs set up by the government have to support the refinement of the information systems that in turn supports the surveillance. These programs have to provide financial commitment to run the human and system resources that are essential to run them. National malaria programs should work hard to improve the accessibility and use of these information systems and confirm the cross-border data sharing mechanism with the use of standard identification of malaria surveillance.

The surveillance system must take care of the aspects like sensitive and portable diagnostic tests, real time data about the patient’s drug resistance parasites, vectors showing insecticide resistance, transmission intensity markers, climatic factors, demographic and geo-spatial information for the places that are at risk and frequent malaria incidence counts.

Along with the improved tools for surveillance and response, the product development pipeline for malaria has come out with new tools. These tools can help in detecting, treating and preventing malaria that includes advanced diagnostic tools, vaccines, medicines and vector control products.

2.

There are many research studies that have determined the clear association of socio-economic factors and the capability of the people to be healthy and fit. The studies emphasized mostly on the issue of income inequality. In the research review done on association of income inequality with the population health, Wilkinson and Pickett found that 78percent of the related studies showed statistically significant data. Seventy percent of the research studies supported the hypothesis that the status of the health is bad in many of the unequal societies. About 30percent of studies did not find any significant evidence.

Wilkinson and Pickett could find that association was significant depending on the geographical location. In countries of Africa, the relationship between poverty and health was observed through undernourishment, lack of access to clean water, poor education, poor sanitation, and lack of accessibility to healthcare facilities. As the nutrition levels get reduced, infant and child mortality increases. The authors also have found that class or social power structures, gender power imbalances especially in African countries are the main reasons for bad health conditions. The authors also found that association of income inequality with bad health was due to the lagged effect as well as due to the measurement and data problems. A strong relationship between the income inequality and life expectancy at birth was determined in this review.

3.

Preparing for the disaster that is yet to come needs the event simulation and the information about the current condition. Flooding risk assessment in United States is known to be using a simulation software called HEC-Res from the Army Corps of Engineers and it can provide accurate predictions. IBM has established a precise flood prediction software that attaches the detailed image of the behavior of the ocean, the analytics engine, accurate weather modeling system, a sensor network of stream gauges, high speed computers that are 100 times faster than the prediction models and nearly 100 hours prior warning of the future conditions.