Online Program

Oral

Big Data, Open Data, Social Data, my data -understanding how these relate and interact is crucial in managing public health information today harnessing data in a practical, effective, and scientific manner is critical to our public health mission. The digital state of the world is transforming. With 6 of the 7.6 billion people in the world having access to a cell phone and the digital data it can provide and display, societies have exponentially increased surveillance and data gathering, as well as information dissemination in a near real-time manner. At an individual level, every click on an internet browser or app, or entry to personal bank transaction and social media tools, is contributing to the ever-growing source of available data. These qualitative and quantitative data can be enriched, linked, analyzed and transformed to provide more public health context and actionable information for promoting health and preventing disease. We will be sharing three research projects exploring the integration new or disparate data sources, and the impact public health informatics research is having at the state level: The facts and fallacies discovered in our assessment of integrating Social Data on food safety monitoring/surveillance and disease detection. The pros and cons of integrating existing legacy disparate data to provide better context and insights to understanding disease processes and informing health action and policy. Generating or integrating new data sources to aid in your own surveillance, evaluation, and research activities.

Session Objectives: Identify major challenges related to leveraging new data sources. Provide examples of sources for where new data are emerging, and the strengths and limitations of these sources. Identify strategies for bridging disparate data sources and describe the related benefits of doing so. Identify major tools in the Public Health Analytics Toolbox that can help public health professionals prepare, examine, analyze, and report data and relevant results.