208765 Using information technology to improve the public health system for prevention and early detection of cancer

Wednesday, November 11, 2009: 8:50 AM

Xiaohua Hu, PhD , College of Information Science and Technology, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Palakorn Achananuparp, MS , College of Information Science and Technology, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Xiaodan Zhang, MS , College of Information Science and Technology, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Caimei Lu, MS , College of Information Science and Technology, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Kathleen Zitka , Pennsylvania Department of Health, Harrisburg, PA
Charlotte Greenawalt , Pennsylvania Department of Health, Harrisburg, PA
Lisa Ulmer, MSW, ScD , Department of Community Health and Prevention, School of Public Health, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
The World Cancer Report urges nations to act to address the alarming increase in global cancer rates. It is estimated that risk factor reduction and appropriate screening could prevent as many as one third of cancers worldwide. However, while effective education to reduce risk factors and increase screening depends on the management and analysis of health information, many public health service providers, organizations, and systems lack tools to harness the power of this information. The Pennsylvania Cancer Education Network (PCEN) is an innovative public-academic partnership linking the Department of Health with Regional PCEN Grantees, Regional Cancer Prevention Consultants, nine County and Municipal Health Departments, and a Network evaluation team. This innovative partnership infuses statewide cancer prevention with prevention science and information technology, to increase the use of new cancer research information, to improve prevention service delivery, and to analyze health outcomes, thus establishing a system of care oriented towards evidence-based prevention.

This presentation will describe, discuss, and demonstrate critical aspects of the use of information technology to improve statewide cancer prevention care including: (1) Creating training webinars, e-learning training videos, and on-line competency certifications to standardize delivery of prevention services; (2) creating a centralized data repository to provide multi-dimensional views of the data and to serve as the basis for OLAP (OnLine Analysis and Processing) and data mining. (3) Developing interactive tools utilizing OLAM capabilities to complement traditional statistical analysis techniques; and (4) Developing strategies to increase utilization of evaluation data through automatic report generation and a graphical user interface.

Learning Objectives:
1. Learn how to build innovative partnerships to improve statewide cancer education. 2. Examine various ways in which technology can be used as a tool to improve statewide cancer education.

Keywords: Cancer Prevention, Information Technology

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics; IEEE Computer Society Bioinformatics and Biomedicine Steering Committee Chair; Founding Director Drexel University Data Mining and Bioinformatics Lab; Expert in data mining and database systems, including data mining algorithms and methods, Web mining, bioinformatics, data mining application in biomedical systems and real time data warehousing and OLAP.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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