Informatics Rotation – Journal

Dates of rotation: (Monday) October 9, 2017 – (Friday) October 13, 2017

Location: CUNY School of Public Health & Health Policy

Activities & Assignments:

• Lecture about Informatics, specifically Population Informatics
  •  Informatics is defined as data with meaning
  • Informatics in about data. Not about creating an app.
  • Learned about the SMAART Informatics Platform which follows the rule that any technological design should be sustainable, work in a variety of sectors, be accessible, affordable, reimbursable, and should be tailored for specific audiences.
• People are looking for solutions now, not problems.
• Data needs to be PERSONALIZED depending on needs since not every component or idea will work for different audiences (ex. messages for teenagers wouldn’t be phrased the same as messages for 65 year olds).
• Lecture about Health and Technology Interventions & Evaluations
  • 4 stages of intervention as well as its components.
  • Discussion regarding difference scenarios and the most appropriate intervention strategies. (ex. How to disseminate information, how to tailor approaches, how technology can be used in interventions).
• Human-Centered Technology enabled Population Health Interventions is an extremely in the field of Informatics because it is all about personalization.
• When looking at community based surveillance, it is important to keep in mind that it needs to be human centered because you want accurate data about the community and the people that live in it.
• Consumer Health Information Platforms for Behavior Modification
  • Internet
  • Health Kiosks
• Big Data and Visual Analytics
  • Where you take a large amount of data and to uncover patterns, trends, preferences and other useful information.
    • Visual analytics is taking that large amount of data you’ve analyzed and summarizing the most important parts in 1 page.
  • Health Technology Assessment and Health Outcomes
  • These platforms need to be sustainable.
• Learned about the difference between data and knowledge  Data is unprocessed.  It’s what you’ve collected.  However, the data must be collected properly or else it would not make sense to process it.  On the other hand, knowledge is the application of data & information.
• Applications of Population Health Informatics
  • An intervention is comprised of population surveillance, data collection, decision tools, self-care, and information therapy.
• Human Centered Design of Consumer Health Information Platforms
  • the goal of this is to have something for individuals to use to elicit any type of change they seek to improve.
• Interventions – deviating away from the standard of care they are a set of actions with a coherent objective to bring about change or produce identifiable outcomes.
  • When doing an intervention, it is important to take into account socioeconomic factors as social determinants of health because these factors decide whether or not an individual will be able to make a behavior change.

• Constraints and challenges in using technologies
• Use of modern technology in healthcare
  • Affordable Care Act – moving from paper based to electronic based system (interoperability – can work anywhere)
• Dr. Ashish’s research assistant discussed the different ways to capture data using various technological avenues.  The advantages of using technology is the fact that fewer mistakes can be made as well as decreasing processing costs while still allowing standardization and anonymity.  However, as much as there are great advantages, there are also challenges that come with using different technologies, for instance challenges in privacy, security, software issues, user friendliness, COST etc)
  • Health Communication & Behavior Change
    • Messages need to be tailored depending on your target audience
• The interns were tasked to come up with design for Food Log app for individuals with metabolic syndrome.
  • We answered preliminary questions regarding components we would want in a food log app, important features, information that should be included/asked, what would we want the food log to look like.
  • “Sketched” what we wanted the Food Log App to look like. Designed what it would look like on screen.
• Internet and Public Health Lecture:
  • Role of Internet 2
  • Your system needs to generate an XML file (output) – inter-optimal which means that data form 1 system can go to another system.
• There is no standard way of how files should be created or viewed.
• We then analyzed our answers regarding what we want to see in the Food Log App.

Comments / Thoughts / Challenges:

• It was interesting to see what we viewed as important aspects of a food log. A challenge was deciding which components of the app were the most important to each of the designers.  Each of us had different priorities in mind when visualizing what our Food Log App would look like which makes designing one challenging.
  • Not everyone will be happy with the final design.
• Another challenge is the fact that we all have a background in Nutrition which means that what we want to see will be similar compared to what someone with a Exercise Science background would prefer.
• When designing interventions, it is important to personalize the message to your target audience.  Not everything will be generalizable.  If you want to reach multiple audiences, you must design multiple interventions which could be challenging and costly.
• I think that the preceptor was unsure of the purpose of the “rotation”.  He thought that we were all graduate students studying Public Health.  Some concepts that were taught were instructed as if we have taken Public Health courses.  I thought that an explanation of the Dietetic Internship should have been provided before the rotation even started.
• It was interesting to learn about this subject as well as its potential positive impact in the field of nutrition.  It was interesting to come up with a design for a food log app.  However, I thought that instead of doing it individually, we could have designed it as a group in order to facilitate more discussion.

Learning Objectives Met:

CRDN 1.6: Incorporate critical thinking skills in overall practice.

CRDN 4.4: Apply current nutrition informatics to develop, store, retrieve and disseminate information and data.

CRDN 4.5: Analyze quality, financial and productivity data for use in planning.

Program Specific Competency 2: Compile and analyze data on nutrition and health, and use social and behavioral theories relevant to Public Health.

Total Clock Hours: 40 hours