The PHI Connect Center of Excellence in Public Health Informatics (PHI) is dedicated to advancing the study and practice of public health informatics through collaborative efforts among academic researchers, public health departments, healthcare institutions, and regional and national organizations.
Center Organzation
The PHI Center is comprised byt three lead institutions:
- Harvard Medical School Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention (DACP) DACP is jointly sponsored by Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. The nation's only medical school department that is jointly sponsored by a health plan, DACP is actively engaged in both research and teaching. The DACP leads in the creation and dissemination of new knowledge and skills essential to maximizing the health of defined populations within available resources
- Children's Hospital Informatics Program at the Harvard-MIT Division of Heatlh Sciences and Technology (CHIP) CHIP is a multidisciplinary applied research program at Children's Hospital Boston and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health, Sciences and Technology. CHIP focuses in three areas: bioinformatics, public health informatics (including biosurveillance), and clinical informatics. The faculty is diverse, including physicians with additional training in information science, computer scientists with expertise in the biomedical sciences, mathematicians, and epidemiologists. CHIP encourages collaboration and provides shared resources to develop innovative information technologies with the goal of both enhancing biomedical research and improving patient care. CHIP also serves as the bioinformatics core for several national genomics investigations.
- Massachusetts Department of Public Health The MA DPH is dedicated to serving all the people in the Commonwealth, particularly the under served, and to promoting healthy people, healthy families, healthy communities and healthy environments through compassionate care, education and prevention.
The Center is organized around two main research projects--one focused on electronic medical records and the other on personally controlled health records in the context of public health. The projects are supported by three cores--an Informatics Core, Statistics Core, and and Administrative Core. A public health practice team is another key component of the Center. The Center relies on a banner Advisory Board and seeks to dock to activities in the NIH National Center for Biocomputing, I2B2.
The Center is supported by three cores:
- Informatics Core In the Informatics Core we aim to develop generalized architectures and methods for public health informatics as part of our Center activities. The research aims of the Core include providing solutions for the two Center projects in the following areas: (a) to design integrated architectural models and systems analyses for public health information flows, (b) to design our solution to be adherent to standards in the nation public health information network and comprehensive regional health information infrastructures, (c) to provide mediators and data modeling tools for semantic data integration between Center projects and for external deployment, and (d) to support the development and dissemination of reliable open-source software and sharable knowledge to benefit the public health community. Secondly, the Core is involved in the architectural integration of the Center projects with the Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO) both in our state and as a model for integration of public health into RHIOs nationally.
- Statistics Core The statistics core has three primary functions. First, it supports the ongoing projects with statistical consultation on design and analysis issues. Second, it works with the project investigators to develop novel statistical methods to most appropriately reach the goals of the projects. Finally, it works with investigators who are developing new proposals within the Center to help with statistical aspects of proposal generation from study design to analysis plans to power calculations.
- Administrative Core The Administrative Core provides infrastructure for the Center. The Administrative Core is responsible for the day-to-day administration, program coordination, and ongoing evaluation of the Center. The administrative core will integrate all collaborating research groups, partners, other Centers, external groups and potential new collaborators. All affiliated researchers will have access to the resources of the Administrative core to assist in the implementation of their deliverables, disseminating the Center’s work and expanding the research efforts of the center. The support provided by the Administrative core includes, but is not limited to, program coordination throughout the Center, administering financial and reporting requirements, assisting researchers in preparing supplemental Center grants, reporting to the CDC, ensuring all institutional requirements for the Center are met and offering any other administrative assistance as required.
Our Sister Centers
- University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine Center of Excellence The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also awarded Center of Excellence to the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine which will focus on developing an interactive knowledge management system that will display relationships among research findings and data sets.
- New York City Health Department Center of Excellence The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also awarded Center of Excellence to the New York City Health Department which will focus on implementing and evaluating a model Electronic Health Record (EHR) system that incorporates public health priorities and epidemiological data.
- Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also awarded Center of Excellence to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory which will focus on investigating new technologies which will improve the timeliness and accuracy of electronic disease surveillance systems and enhance the development of a national disease surveillance network.
- University of Utah, Salt Lake City The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also awarded Center of Excellence to the University of Utah, Salt Lake City which will focus on enhancing the use of electronic medical surveillance in detecting and investigating public health threats. The grants are part of CDC's Health Protection Research Initiative. The goal of the research initiative is to discover strategies and tools that increase the ability of health departments, physicians and other health care providers to promote health and prevent diseases, injuries or disabilities.
