From intervention informatics to prevention informatics

摘要

The contributions of the information science community to health care are significant, especially through systems supporting clinical care for individual patients, an intervention informatics approach. Though valuable, this strategy is reactive, fails to account for numerous environmental factors affecting personal health and falls short of enhancing human health on a broader scale. An unmet challenge with abundant opportunity lies in prevention informatics, a proactive approach drawing on information science and technologies to deliver greater health gains at a population level. Prevention informatics is marked by a high degree social interactivity in real time, with technologies to bring together disparate data and represent it in an integrated and meaningful way as the basis for action. The approach relies on standards for classifying information, systematic knowledge management and improved methods to collect, mine and visualize data. Tools and software are already in use in locations around the world, relying on smartphone technology and geographic information systems to share community health information and location data. Further advances in prevention informatics will require adoption of common terminologies, visualization tools and GIS mapping, and optimized data exchange to support rapid prevention response.