Over the past few years, the importance of electronic connectivity and eHealth enablement for public health purposes is increasingly understood and sought after. As old and new disease pandemics and environmental threats loom, concerns grow about public health and safety. With this interest, growth has come in the health informatics field. The 25 online health informatics resource collections listed below are but a handful of useful sites filled with statistics and data, articles and projects that would garner the interest of any health informatics professional.
Statistics
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Data & Statistics: This site seeks to contain annual reports and statistics on trends in the U.S., including safety and environmental issues. The information is available to anyone.- Child Trends Databank: This is a one-stop source for the latest national trends and research on over 100 key indicators of child and youth well-being. This information isprovided by Child Trends, a national leader in the field for over 30 years.
- Health Data Tools and Statistics: Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce is a collaboration of U.S. government agencies, public health organizations and health sciences libraries. They offer links to health statistics and data sets as well as resources to support data collection.
- Health.Data.Gov: This is public resource designed to bring together high-value datasets, tools, and applications using data about health and health care. These datasets and tools have been gathered from agencies across the Federal government with the goal of improving health for all Americans.
- Health Indicators Warehouse: The HIW is a collaboration of many agencies and offices within the Department of Health and Human Services. The HIW is maintained by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
- HHS Gateway to Data and Statistics: This Web-based tool provides easy access to HHS data and statistics and is designed to help users locate health-related data, statistical information and reports collected from various government resources in one convenient location.
- HRSA Data Warehouse: Health Resources and Services Administration provides access to information about HRSA programs and related health resources including data on health professional shortage areas, medically underserved areas, and primary care service areas.
- Injury Prevention & Control: Data & Statistics: WISQARS(Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System) is an interactive database system that provides customized reports of injury-related data. Gain control over information about fatal, nonfatal and violent deaths.
- The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS): This site contains a continuous, multipurpose survey of a nationally representative sample of aged, disabled, and institutionalized Medicare beneficiaries.
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Statistics from SAMHSA’s Office of Applied Studies (OAS): SAMHSA, an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, is the Federal Government’s lead agency for improving the quality and availability of substance abuse prevention, addiction treatment, and mental health services in the United States.
Tools and Resources
Health IT Tools and Resources: AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) and its community of contractors and grantees have developed tools to help health care organizations plan for, implement and evaluate health information technology (IT). The tools are freely available, but proper citation should be used when referenced on the Web or in print.- HRET Disparities Toolkit: The Health Research and Educational Trust Disparities Toolkit is a Web-based tool that provides hospitals, health systems, clinics, and health plans information and resources for systematically collecting race, ethnicity, and primary language data from patients.
- HSRR (Health Services and Sciences Research Resources): Web-based tool that provides access to HHS data and statistics and also brings together key Federal health and human services-related data and statistics from other sources.
- National Public Health Performance Standards Program (NPHPSP): The NPHPSP is a National Partnership initiative that has developed National Public Health Performance Standards for state and local public health systems and for public health governing bodies.
- PH Informatics Toolkit: National Association of County & City Health Officials (NACCHO) provides a section that contains the Public Health Informatics toolbox, NACCHO’s online exchange of public health informatics publications, tools, and resources to help local health departments plan and implement public health informatics projects.
- Public Health Informatics and National Health Information Systems — an Overview: This overview contains information about the process, including background papers and a link to a conference wiki on Public Health Informatics.
- UC Davis Health System Seminar Series: This series of videocasts between 2005 and 2008 cover a wide spectrum of information about topics such as ontologies, public health applications, pediatric healthcare and other subjects.
Web Sites
Canada Health Infoway: Funded by the Government of Canada, Infoway works with the country’s ten provinces and three territories to implement private, secure EHR systems, enabling best practices and successful projects in one region to be shared or replicated in other regions.- Center for Public Health Informatics: The University of Washington School of Public Health offers an entire Web site filled with projects, publications, conference information and news.
- CoreGroup: The site contains network information and a Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group that develops tools and trainings to increase child survival and health program performance and quality through the standardization of use of data, analysis and reporting.
- Health Information Technology: The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services provides a site that focuses entirely on health and IT. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is at the forefront of the administration’s health IT efforts and is a resource to the entire health system to support the adoption of health information technology and the promotion of nationwide health information exchange to improve health care.
- National Health Informatics Collection Archive: This archive contains images of material from the National Health Informatics Collection (NHIC) based at the University of Central Lancashire. The purpose of the archive is to hold and preserve digital copies of materials central to the development of the health informatics discipline in the United Kingdom.
- NHS Connecting for Health: NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CFH) is part of the Department of Health Informatics Directorate in the UK. Their role is to maintain and develop the NHS national IT infrastructure.
- Public Health Informatics Network: Sponsored by the CDC, this network is designed to enable consistent exchange of response, health, and disease tracking data between public health entities. PHIN is composed of five key components: detection and monitoring, data analysis, knowledge management, alerting, and response.
- World Health Organization: WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.
