141st APHA Annual Meeting

In This section

287082
Public health big data: Do you have the breadth of competencies required to make it useful

Monday, November 4, 2013 :

J. Mark Conde , Technology Services / Career MPH program, Rollins School of Public Health, Atlanta, GA
This lecture is designed to complement the panel discussion on Big Data usage in public health. The focus is on the competencies and skills an organization will need to be successful deriving, designing, and deploying complex, large volume data systems to meet public health information needs. Often it is thought that we can use traditional skills such as classic statistical data methods or simple database systems to handle large volume and complex heterogeneous data but this falls short due to new challenges. The challenges around the pure technology storage and access to large data volumes, the demand for dealing with structured and unstructured data together, and the fusion of data sources that have never been designed to be used together require investment in new competencies. This discussion will help you understand where competencies are changing for your IT people, your Informaticians, and the practitioners. Its easy to list a bunch of new competencies you have to acquire but often its not so obvious where they should be developed in your staff and how many people are involved. We will take some time to map these competencies with roles or groups of people you will need to work with big data platforms.

Learning Areas:
Administration, management, leadership
Communication and informatics
Public health or related education

Learning Objectives:
Define what a competency is to support using big data technology solutions Describe the specific set of competencies required for working with big data in public health Explain how the needed competencies map to humans (FTEs) you need to engage

Keywords: Information Technology, Competency

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: As the IT director for the Rollins School of public health as well a the Associate Director and faculty member of the CMPH Applied PH Informatics I am very focused on the training and competency development for PH informaticians. I am very actively involved in PH informatics as the chair of the Association of PH Laboratories (APHL) informatics committee and a board member of The Joint Public Health Informatics Taskforce ( JPHIT).
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.