The University of Washington proposes to establish the Center of Excellence in Public Health Informatics:Improving the Public's Health through Information Integration. Partners include the Washington Departmentof Health, Kitsap County Health District, the Public Health Informatics Institute, and Inland Northwest HealthServices. This Center will focus on three research topics: Project 1 (Surveillance Integration and DecisionSupport) will develop public health surveillance methodswithin the emerging health informationinfrastructure. We will: 1) develop methods by which regional health information organizations can enhancepublic health surveillance; 2) develop and evaluate a probabilistic decision support system classifier fordisease surveillance; and 3) investigate the usability of a web survey-assessment system for populationtracking and disease reporting. Project 2 (Customizable Knowledge Management Repository System forPrevention: Design, Development, and Evaluation) will develop an interactive digital knowledgemanagement system to support the collection, management, and retrieval of public health documents, data, earning objects, and tools. The focus will be the development of tools, including concept mapping servicesthat will provide rapid access to answers from a variety of key resources, including the 'gray literature'. Thesystem will focus on the application of natural language processing and information visualization techniques.Components will include a knowledge repository system, integrative web services and a role-based user nterface to support access to information resources for enhanced decision-making by practitioners. Theong-term goal is to create an environment in which practitioners can pose questions in 'plain English' andreceive answers to their questions rather than simply a list of possible places to look for answers. Project 3 Supporting Integration: Work Process, Change Management and System Modeling) will: 1) refine andvalidate an integrated model of public health information technologywork; 2) provide a Change ManagementToolkit to support public health agencies in making changes to current practice called for by the integratedmodel; and 3) build a Virtual Public Health Information Technology Environment to serve as a testbed and toexplore informatics challenges. These projects are supported by three cores: Administration Core (Core A),Epidemiology and Biostatistics Science Core (Core B), and Technology and Design Science Core (Core C).
