Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Mark T. Ciampa, MS, PMP and Robert C. Porch, BS. Booz Allen Hamilton, 230 Peachtree St NW, Atlanta, GA 30303, 404-658-8085, ciampa_mark@bah.com

The public health community has dealt with decreasing budgets accompanied by an expanded role in a number of national initiatives. This has led to a lag in the implementation of technology that supports public health goals, as resources do not always allow for significant investments. The use of structured methodologies to develop software and in particular, methods to ensure an accurate understanding of requirements, are essential, as it is less costly to make changes early in the lifecycle than after software has been developed. In addition, there is traditionally a gap between public health staff and developers' understanding of program needs, leading to systems that fail to meet program needs.

Public health informatics helps bridge that gap, blending public health expertise with IT knowledge and improving information exchange between public health managers and IT staff. Coupled with informatics is a best practice methodology that uses visual models to convey complex features in ways that can easily be understood by non-technical staff. These models assist in translating program needs into a form that informatics requires to implement systems.

Session participants will learn the advantages of using methodologies supported by modeling to ensure public health staff and developers have a common understanding of requirements. This is essential for public health managers to embrace to make sure that technology investments support critical goals while doing so in a cost effective manner. The end result is to improve technology adoption in the public health community by developing systems that meet users' program needs.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to

• Provide information to public health managers on how their staff can better bridge the gap between the program and IT
• Understand how the use of iterative and visual methodologies assist in translating public health needs into technology to support the program
• Articulate the process for gathering comprehensive user requirements
• List 3-5 visual models that are key to translating user needs into a system
• Discuss the benefits of a model-driven approach

Keywords: Public Health Informatics, Information System Integration

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation