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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Thomas R Eng, VMD, MPH, eHealth Institute, 1420 Woodman Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20902, 301-649-7760, teng@ehealthinstitute.org and Susan Hassmiller, RN, PhD, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Rt. 1 and College Rd. East, Princeton, NJ 08543.
Population health technologies encompass the various applications of technology to improve the health of populations. Recent advances in many technology sectors, such as information and communications technologies (e.g., the Internet, networking), genomics, microelectromechanical systems, and nanotechnologies, provide enormous opportunities for population health improvement. Potential application areas ripe for innovative technologies include health surveillance, environmental monitoring and pollution prevention, food safety, health behavior change, self-care, chronic disease monitoring, population health screening tools, and injury prevention. Population health, however, has not yet fully reaped the benefits of recent technological advances. This is because 1) most investors and developers with an interest in emerging health technologies have focused attention on medical care interventions for individuals; 2) the markets for population health technologies have not been defined; 3) there is a lack of professional and public understanding and recognition of this nascent discipline; 4) there is a lack of national leadership and supporting infrastructure to promote the development of population health technologies; 5) technology transfer and commercialization of ideas from public health institutions have been unsuccessful; and 6) the development of population health technologies requires a multidisciplinary and multisector approach involving stakeholders who do not usually communicate or collaborate with each other. There is a need to build “the field” of population health technologies and to accelerate the development and dissemination of such technologies. Key steps include building the capacity of professionals in population health technologies, coalescing national leadership, and supporting population health technology developers in bringing their products to market.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Public Health Informatics, Technology
Related Web page: www.ehealthinstitute.org
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.