Question

how can public health professionals integrate public health informatics in change management theories? why is this an important skill for a the public health official?

Answer 1

Effective public health informatics requires a project manager to be as conscious of the attitudes and needs of employees as of technical determinations associated with information technology in a public health organization. Bringing informatics to bear on a public health organization necessarily involves change in the way work gets done, and, in general, the natural tendency of people is not always to welcome change. An implementer of an information system must be aware of the types of change typical in an organization and of the impact of those types on various levels of the organization. In addition, a project manager needs to expect, identify, and deal with resistance to change. To do so, a project manager needs to be conscious of the magnitude of change that a system will create. A knowledge and application of small group theories and field theory can be very useful to a project manager who wants to secure employee commitment to changes resulting from a new or significantly modified system. Finally, a change manager can greatly facilitate the task of guiding employees toward the changes brought about by new systems through involving employees in the changes by the use of practical change management strategies.

Public Health informatics is the effective use of information and information technology to improve population health outcomes.

Informatics is an applied information science that designs the blueprints for the complex data systems that keep information secure, usable and responsive to the user’s needs. Informaticians often act as knowledge architects—the information systems they build account for function, user needs and even local context.

Informatics synthesizes the theory and practices of computer science, information sciences, and behavioral and management sciences into methods, tools and concepts that lead to information systems that impact health. When employed effectively, informatics transforms raw data into usable information.

Information is a needed resource in public health work, serving as the first step in large-scale analyses of diseases, whether chronic or infectious. Practitioners require information as a resource, but obtaining or interpreting data can be difficult. Informatics can often function essentially as a translation service for these practitioners by interpreting data, turning them into information, and presenting that information to the practitioners who need it in a language they can understand.

When applied to public health, informatics can be used to enable effective monitoring and surveillance, support improved decision-making, and improve population health. Public health informatics assures that the right technologies are used to improve timely delivery of quality data and assists data-driven decision making. It builds bridges across siloed public health work areas by “translating” between these communities, creating opportunities for interoperable information pathways. Ultimately, public health informatics empowers disease interventions and prevention—leading to better health of individuals and the community in which they live.

In spite of its important role, informatics is not widely understood in the field of public health—and as a result, its expertise and contributions are often invisible, underutilized and under-resourced. For many professionals within public health, communicating the value of public health informatics to leaders is not easy. In partnership with the CDC and the FrameWorks Institute, PHII is pleased to offer free tools to assist in these communications efforts.

Communicators are encouraged to borrow the toolkit language and adapt the examples and recommendations to the immediate needs of a specific communications context. No citations or special permissions are needed for these public-facing applications.