Health Informatics in the Public Health 3.0 Era: Intelligence for the Chief Health Strategists

While just 10 years ago the health system largely relied on paper, today nearly all hospitals and three-fourths of office-based physicians are using certified electronic health records (EHRs), in part, as a result of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009. Moreover, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, more than 90% of Americans now have health insurance, meaning we now have the opportunity to have a clinical record of our care experience that can support longitudinal follow-up and improved population-level surveillance.2 Looking forward, we can clearly envision a health care landscape where data are abundant and flowing and used to guide care delivery decisions—a learning health system described in our Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap. Data and analytics have historically been the backbone of public health—used to identify and track epidemics, make causal inferences, and direct resources to protect the health of the most vulnerable members of our communities. But this new and quickly evolving digitally supported learning health system provides local health departments (LHDs) with an exciting opportunity to harness the power of data and technology in ways previously thought to be impossible. Electronically accessible health care information can help empower local public health officers and their teams to serve as chief health strategists for their communities. In this role, they can leverage data and form strategic partnerships to address the factors that influence the public’s health, including the broader social determinants. Yet, the work of the researchers in this issue of the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice has shown that while LHDs are increasing their capacities in receiving and storing primary health data electronically, many gaps remain in order for LHDs to make the most of digitized health data. For