Connecting Information to Promote Public Health

Abstract

With the development of information technology in the past 12 years, China has established the specialized or vertical web-based information systems for data collection of disease and related risk factor. These information systems are described as public health information systems (PHIS) in China. When PHIS has thus evolved in a haphazard and fragmented way under the pressure administrative, economic and legal, local health workers who are overburdened with multiple and time-consuming reporting requirements cannot deliver timely, accurate and complete data. Seeing that the information of disease surveillance is provided by hospitals and health service centers in China and that the development of electronic medical record (EMR) and electronic health record (EHR) occurs under the policy and investment of health since 2009 in China, there should be a connection and data sharing mechanism between EMR (EHR) and PHIS to support public health surveillance and public health decision-making. The paper aims at discussing current status and problems of PHIS in China, making a brief introduction on the blueprint of health information technology in China, exploring solution for interoperability between PHIS and EHR (EMR), and sharing some experiences and lessons from pilot project on automatic notifiable infectious disease reporting.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

public health / information system / data exchange / China

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The Author(s) 2016. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)