What is public health informatics?

Public health informatics is the integration of public health, information technology, and computer science that uses a systematic application to control and prevent diseases and injuries through surveillance and management systems. Public health informatics can be used for research, education, investigation, outbreak management, preparedness, health promotion, and more (Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, 2018).

Compare public health informatics with other health informatics domains: Clinical and Bioinformatics

There are various health informatics domains, such as clinical informatics which is an integration of the clinical field with information technology that focuses on creating informatics that delivers health services. These types of informatics can be used to track patient’s data, create secure health information exchange portals to prevent HIPPA violations, and create medical record systems for both patients and medical providers (AMIA Organization, 2021).

Another health informatics domain is bioinformatics which is the integration of computer science and the discipline of biology which focuses on researching, collecting, storing, investigating, and evaluating biological data. This type of informatics focuses on molecular biology, genetics, and genomics to create projects like the Human Genome Project or the determination of gene and protein functions (National Human Genome Research Institution, 2021).

Therefore, the difference between clinical, public health, and bioinformatics is public health informatics focuses on the population’s health as a whole, clinical informatics forces more on the patients, and bioinformatics focuses more on the biological and cellular level.

The identification of a public health challenge and how public health informatics tools and methodologies can be applied to address that challenge

When the covid-19 pandemic occurred in 2020 and people were being diagnosed with covid, the medical professionals were turning these infected individuals away from healthcare because the doctors did not want to have direct contact with the infected, therefore the infected could not go to the medical clinics to seek help. This issue was becoming a common public health challenge and resulted in people bypassing the clinic for simple treatments and going to the hospitals, which resulted in overpopulation and financial burden on the healthcare system. However, many physicians and clinics noticed this trend and ventured into a major component of health informatics, which is telemedicine. They started to have virtual care which reduced the strain on the hospitals and aided in improving the health of the population and reduce the death rates. However, not every physician or clinic had the money or resources to create a telemedicine component within a short time frame. Therefore, to address this challenge in the future, there needs to be a free or reduced-price telemedicine system for public health officials to utilize to help the population.