Virtual Public Health Informatics Workshop

This is now a past event.

Please see below the event proceedings.

VIRTUAL PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATICS WORKSHOP

ON

“Leveraging Public Health Informatics: Enhancing Healthcare Systems and Outcomes”

June 25th 2024 – 3:00 PM, Central European Time (CET)

Organized by the Faculty of Health Sciences, James Lind Institute (JLI), Geneva, Switzerland

➢ INTRODUCTION OF THE EVENT
The Faculty of Health Sciences at the James Lind Institute, Switzerland, recently hosted a Public Health Informatics Virtual Workshop. The workshop commenced with an introduction to the James Lind Institute, a Swiss EduQua-certified international educational institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. The institute is dedicated to preparing students for careers in public health, health administration, pharmaceutical sciences, clinical research, economics, diplomacy, business management, and beyond. It boasts a network of over 5000 alumni spanning across 80+ countries globally.

➢ OBJECTIVES OF THE EVENT
1. Gain a comprehensive understanding of the foundational concepts of public health informatics and its significance in modern healthcare systems.
2. Delve into the diverse applications of informatics in public health.
3. Recognize the challenges and opportunities associated with adopting and implementing informatics solutions in public health practice, with a special focus on developing countries.
4. Engage in discussions about emerging trends and future directions in public health informatics, focusing on addressing future pandemics.
5. Acquire practical skills and tools for leveraging informatics to enhance public health decision-making, research, and policy development.

➢ TARGET AUDIENCE
1. Public health workers and professionals
2. Healthcare practitioners, researchers
3. Students pursuing Public Health courses
4. People from other diverse professional backgrounds

➢ DETAILS OF THE HOSTS
1. Dr. Mufti Suhail Sayeed, Facilitator
2. Dr. Sonal Katyal, Facilitator
3. Dr. Anahita Ali, Moderator

➢ DETAILS OF THE EVENT – SESSION 1
1. After the formal welcoming of the participants, guests, and attendees of the conference, the path towards the conference took the route of shedding some light on the importance of the conference for its participants and the attendees by highlighting how Public Health Informatics now has traveled the journey of a “choice” to a “necessity” in today’s era.
2. Continuing, the moderator of the event, Dr. Anahita Ali welcomed Dr. Suhail Sayeed, Facilitator of the workshop, session 1, Event and Academic Director at James Lind Institute.
3. Apart from the Facilitator, the moderator also welcomed the Guest Speaker of the event, Dr. Ashish Joshi. He is currently working as a Dean and Distinguished University Professor at The University of Memphis, US.
4. Dr. Suhail Sayeed extended a warm welcome to the participants and attendees, emphasizing the workshop’s significance in the global context following the COVID-19 pandemic. He underscored the severity of the disease and highlighted the crucial need for Informatics in such a challenging time.
5. Dr. Ashish Joshi, took over the session, continuing the aforementioned importance of the need for Public Health Informatics in today’s era, specifically during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The highlight of his presentation was the 3 pillars that he emphasized throughout his session. He specifically addressed issues such as digital divide, literacy, and Public Health informatics could be taken to its last mile. He also
welcomed queries (if any) at the end of his session.
6. His session was staged on the topic of Advancing Health Equity through the lens of Population Health Informatics, emphasizing the need to make technology reachable to the common masses to be able to fulfill its true meaning.
7. He shed some light on his journey in the medical field, inspired by his losses and gains, which were based on his technological challenges of not being well-versed with the know-how of using computer or internet services, which ultimately motivated him to pursue his Ph.D in Informatics in Public Health.
8. He underlined the important difference between the SMAART model and the SMART model. The former translates to ‘Sustainable, Multi-sector, Accessible, Affordable, Reimbursable, and Tailored. While focusing on the social determinants of Health, he emphasized that ‘Health’ is not just driven by the disease but is also a manifestation of the living standards of people, their eating habits, and their lifestyle. ‘Health’ should be looked upon from the perspective of a broad people base.
9. Dr. Ashish also focused on Why Public Health is now more important than ever before, one of the reasons is Changing Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic norms. He mentioned about the transition of the society from Public Health 1.0 to Public Health 3.0. The difference between the two lies in the engagement of multiple sectors and community partners to generate a collective impact. This transition made the society realize whether the existing resources sufficient enough to cater to the needs of the society. Economic Stability, Education access and quality, Social and community context, Neighbourhood and built environment, and healthcare access and quality, are some of the most important social components of Health, which makes it holistic in its true sense. Thus, such components highlight the utter importance of multi-sectoral engagement to make the concept of ‘health’, a hit in society.
10. However, according to Dr. Joshi, 2 key elements, i.e., the Data-sharing component and the Data-governance component come into play. The COVID-19 pandemic marked a stark inability of these two factors which posed a huge challenge to the countries while overcoming the pandemic. The countries were hesitant to share the prerequisite data, the definition of which was also missing. Hence, Dr. Joshi concluded that Public Health
3.0 is utterly important to bolster the multi-sectoral component of ‘Health’ which is missing.
11. Dr. Joshi then proceeded to explain the SMAART model about which he previously specified. SMAART, as Dr. Joshi suggests, is a human-centric & impact-driven solution.
i. According to this model, ‘Human-centric’ means the end-user of the approach. Hence, it is data-driven & evidence-based policies based on community participation and engagement.
ii. It is a dynamic and flexible approach implemented across sectors & circumstances
iii. Dr. Joshi specifies this model as a ‘Middle out approach’ as he calls it. As it works at the policy level as well as the community level.
12. He then proceeded to explain the SMAART HUB, which is, a community driven, Research-based solution, Innovations and Interventions, Skills-based Education, Entrepreneurship, and Employment.
13. Towards the end of the presentation, Dr. Joshi also mentioned certain Barriers to population health informatics which comprise Privacy, confidentiality, and security of population data, data quality, data sharing and data governance, sustainability, cost and poor infrastructure, lack or limited interest, inadequate trained human resources, technical constraints including connectivity, bandwidth provision.
14. As the end note, Dr. Joshi gave his valuable insights by recommending the derivation of user-friendly solutions, the reason, as he emphasized, that the community or the population is who would benefit in the end, followed by his query session. The session then was followed by Session 2 where the Moderator invited the distinguished Guest Speaker 2, who was also a Public Health Informatics Specialist.
The Moderator also introduced Facilitator of the session 2, Dr. Sonal Katiyal, Program Director for Economics at James Lind Institute & Rushford Business School. Dr. Ayomide, the respected Field Expert and Guest Speaker was then warmly welcomed, who has recently completed his PhD in Health Informatics at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

➢ PICTURES FROM SESSION 1

➢ DETAILS OF THE EVENT – SESSION 2
1. Dr. Sonal Katyal commenced the session by extending a warm welcome to everyone present in the meeting and underlining the critical need to transform healthcare delivery and public health system across Africa. She highlighted the fact that Africa is the 2nd largest and 2nd most populated Continent with a rich culture and landscapes, with a population of 1.4 billion people. She mentions that Africa is currently the most focused area across the globe for economic growth, innovation, and development despite certain disparities such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure.
2. She underlined that Africa carries the potential that is harnessed to use its natural and human resources to their full potential. Despite significant challenges, there are efforts to improve public health through innovation increased funding, and international cooperation.
3. She then invited the esteemed Guest Speaker for session 2, Dr. Ayomide, to take over the session to discuss key initiatives, successful case studies, and the strategic role of AI in shaping the future of public health in Africa.
4. Dr. Ayomide Owoyemi defined Public Health Informatics as a dynamic and impactful field with endless possibilities for improving population health through data and technology, as a part of the introduction.
5. Onto the next important portion of his presentation, Dr. Ayomide mentioned one of the Case Studies known as The Wellvis COVID Triage Tool. This tool is used as a simple rule-based system to help quantify the risk of exposure of individuals to COVID-19 in South Sudan. The basic idea behind this Triage Tool was latent in the condition where people were restricted to staying inside their homes and to not leaving their households
in Nigeria and other African countries. Such countries face the challenge of a disproportionate ratio of doctors to the population numbers.
6. He dwelled into the intricacies of this Triage Tool wherein he mentioned that various Healthcare professionals were involved in the duration of making procedure of this Tool. He mentioned that different people from a variety of areas were included in the trials.
7. A shot to try to find a messaging-based system was focused on being inculcated in the Tool to be able to make this tool increase its reach by reaching more people since technological hindrances were the least problematic during the times of COVID-19, as Dr. Ayomide explains that this was the fastest and the easiest way to maximize the reach of the tool.
8. He then mentioned another Case Study named the CDC V-Safe Tool which is a smartphone-based tool that uses text messaging and web surveys to provide personalized health check-ins after you receive a COVID-19 vaccination.
9. The next step of the outline was the Approaching Applications, defining the Challenges & Considerations which included appropriateness, existing infrastructure, sustainability plans, health worker capacity, digital literacy and access, and localization of design processes.
10. He also suggested A’s Five-Step Approach including Fundamentals, Dynamics, Appraise, ideation, and Synthesize/Revolutionize.

➢ PICTURES FROM SESSION 2

➢ CONCLUSION
Dr. Suhail concluded the event by providing a comprehensive recap of the presentations delivered by the respective guest speakers to the event attendees. He underscored the potential of Public Health Informatics as a promising career path for public health enthusiasts, independent of their medical backgrounds.