Selected Topics - Information and Communication Technology

Events

• School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW - Upcoming Events

Global policies and related documents

Reports, guidelines and projects

• Costs and Benefits of Health Information Technologies
  This United States Agency for Health Care Research and Quality report examines the costs and benefits of health information technology. The report acknowledges that while health IT has been shown to improve quality of care for patients, most health care providers need more information about how to implement these technologies successfully. The report is a synthesis of studies that have examined the quality impact of health IT as well as the costs and organizational changes needed to implement health IT systems.
• Gateway to Health Informatics for Teaching
  A joint project between Centre for Health Informatics and Multiprofessional Education (CHIME), University College London Medical School and The UK NHS, Education and Training Programme in IM&T for Clinicians (part of the Enabling People Programme)
• Making a Powerful Connection: the Health of the Public and the National Information Infrastructure
  Report of the U.S. Public Health Service, Public Health Data Policy Coordinating Committee (July 6, 1995) ntegrate telecommunication into public health and health care.
• Public Scholarship: A New Perspective for the 21st Century
  This article by S. Graubard, Professor Emeritus of History at Brown University - explores the need to transform raw information into structured and detailed knowledge in an information saturated world

Educational resources

• Equity Oriented Tool Kit
  The Equity-Oriented Tool Kit for Health Technology Assessment is a needs-based health technology assessment model used to provide methods to match the identified health needs of a population, to the most appropriate interventions. The existing tool kit that focused on averages, has now been expanded to take into account issues of gender equity, social justice and community participation. The Tool Kit has been developed by the WHO Collaborating Centre for Health Technology Assessment.
• Health Communication and Mass Media Links
  This site provides access to resources on health communication, social marketing, and mass media with a strong emphasis on behavioral change
• Health Informatics World Wide
  This site provides regularly updated links to health informatics resources throughout the world. It is maintained by Stefan Schulz and Stefan Schlachter at the Informatics Department of the University of Freiberg, Germany.
• Public Health Information and Data Tutorial
  The Public Health Information and Data Tutorial provides instruction for members of the public health workforce on issues related to information access and management. Its objectives include enabling public health practitioners to stay informed of developments and events related to public health; find reliable and authoritative consumer-oriented materials to support health education and retrieve statistical information and access data sets relevant to public health.
• Supercourse: Epidemiology, the Internet, and Global Health
  The supercourse is designed to provide an overview on epidemiology and the Internet for medical and health related students around the world. It includes lectures from educational institutions throughout the world.

Organisations and Networks

UN and multinational

• Health Metrics Network
  The Health Metrics Network is a global collaboration focused on strengthening country health information systems to generate sound data for decision making at country and global levels. Partners include developing countries, multilateral and bilateral agencies, foundations, other global health partnerships, and technical experts. Most importantly, HMN seeks to bring together health and statistical constituencies in order to build capacity and expertise and enhance the availability, quality, dissemination, and use of data for decision-making.
• UNDP Asia Pacific Development Information Programme
  The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) is an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that aims to promote the development and application of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for poverty alleviation and sustainable human development in the Asia-Pacific region. It does so through three core programme areas, namely: Policy Development and Dialogue, Access and Content Development and Knowledge Management.
• Voxiva
  "Voxiva Inc. is a socially responsible information and communications technology (ICT) company with headquarters in Washington, D.C. and offices in Lima, Peru, and Delhi, India. Incorporated in March 2001, Voxiva’s mission is to provide innovative phone and web-based ICT services for public and private-sector programs working to improve the health, safety and wellbeing of people in the developing world"

Government

• Lister Hill Center for Biomedical Communications
  The Lister Hill Center is a research and development division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Seeking to improve access to high quality biomedical information for individuals around the world, the Lister Hill Center conducts and supports research and development in the dissemination of high quality imagery, medical language processing, high-speed access to biomedical information, intelligent database systems development, multimedia visualization, knowledge management, data mining and machine-assisted indexing

Non Government

• Acacia Initiative - International Research Development Centre
  “The Acacia Initiative: Communities and the Information Society in Africa Program Initiative is an international program to empower sub-Saharan communities with the ability to apply information and communication technologies (ICTs) to their own social and economic development.”
• American Telemedicine Association
  The American Telemedicine Association promotes access to medical care for consumers and health professionals via telecommunications technology. ATA seeks to bring together diverse groups from traditional medicine, academic medical centers, technology and telecommunications companies, e-health, medical societies, government and others to overcome barriers to the advancement of telemedicine through the professional, ethical and equitable improvement in health care delivery.
• Hi-Ethics
  "Or Health Internet Ethics, is a coalition uniting the most widely used health Internet sites supporting the highest ethical standards. Member companies are committed to earning the trust and confidence of consumers who choose to use Internet health services for improving their health and healthcare."
• Satellife: The Global Health Information Network
  SATELLIFE develops solutions to the everyday information needs of health professionals working in communities where AIDS and malaria are common place, but medical journals and the Internet are an unaffordable luxury. It aims to break down barriers to information access by disseminating up-to-date, relevant information that enables good decision making, by deploying multiple technologies and building health care workers' skills to utilize these technologies effectively and by creating local, regional, and global communities that share information and support each other.
• Telemedicine Information Exchange (USA)
  This page includes a bibliographic database of telemedicine literature; a list of telemedicine programs, including contact information, technology used, and project description; a list of telemedicine and telemedicine-related meetings and conferences; a list of potential telemedicine funding agencies; a 'What's New' in telemedicine; and a list of telemedicine equipment and services vendors.

Academic Institutions with particular focus in this area

• Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School
  "The Berkman Center is a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. We represent a network of faculty, students, fellows, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and virtual architects working to identify and engage with the challenges and opportunities of cyberspace. The center investigates the real and possible boundaries in cyberspace between open and closed systems of code, of commerce, of governance, and of education, and the relationship of law to each. "
• Centre for Health Informatics, University of Wales, Swansea
  The Health Informatics team at the University of Wales specialises in information systems for health care and the application of Internet/intranet and videoconferencing technologies to enable effective communication between primary and secondary care and their patients.
• Centre for Health Informatics
  University of New South Wales, (AUS) - "The Centre for Health Informatics engages in research, development and commercialisation of advanced information and communication technologies for health care delivery. CHI pursues research into clinical decision-support, clinical communication, home telecare and evaluation"
• School of Health Information Science
  The mission of the School of Health Information Science at the University of Canada is to improve health care delivery systems by educating individuals to be effective developers, users and managers of health information resources; by advancing knowledge through research; and by providing a consultative service to the health care community. The School's view of health information encompasses clinical, sociological, epidemiological, administrative, legal, and economic perspectives.
• School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW
• School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW - Research

Key Conferences, conference and workshop reports

Coming conferences

Conference reports

• National Health Information Summit, Sofitel 6-7 December 2004
  The National Health Information Summit's themes were: the evolution of health IM&ICT as an integral part of appropriate health care delivery; Improving patient safety and the quality of health care through IM&ICT; Empowering consumers and transforming the patient-clinician relationship; Australia’s electronic health records network; Health IM&ICT for public health and population research; and Building the IM&ICT capacity of the health workforce.

Journals, Newsletters, Forums

Bibliographies, Libraries

Public health bookshops

• Public Health bookshop