Public health informatics in a rural county: Efficiency, redundancy, and bureaucracy

The information systems utilized in a rural county or other political entity vary from locale to locale and from state to state. What are the systems in place and how are they integrated both within the county and to the state or federal agencies that deal with public health? The need for integrated information systems is both reasonable and justified by and for the local taxpayers. The purpose of the study was to identify the various public health informatics systems used in a rural midwestern county. A public health information system is to provide the data necessary for the health department to function in the role of assessment, policy development, and assurance of population health. A survey was taken of certain local government entities to identify the various systems used. The findings were extreme with some systems being readily available with proper security on the Internet, while at the other end were disparate, overlapping, redundant, and antiquated paper systems. The taxpayers of the county deserve better data integration with one network uniting all levels of any government information technology system from the township to the federal level with the data entered one time into the system by a qualified person.