The Importance of Health Informatics in Public Health during a Pandemic 487

J. Mantas et al. (Eds.)

© 2020 The authors and IOS Press.
This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms
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doi:10.3233/SHTI200602

The Importance of Health Informatics in

Public Health During the COVID-19
Pandemic
John MANTAS a,1
a
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Abstract. The COVID-19 pandemic became a challenge to all the health care
systems across the world causing at places collapse of the healthcare systems and
endangering the healthcare professionals and consequently the public health. One
powerful tool for the healthcare systems and the policy makers is Health Informatics.
This brief article presents the challenges faced by Health Informatics in supporting
healthcare professionals and public health authorities in the world.

Keywords. Health Informatics, COVID-19, Pandemic, Public Health

1. Introduction

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe

acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).[1] First identified in
December 2019 in Wuhan, China, it resulted in an ongoing pandemic The first case may
be traced back to 17 November 2019. As of 5 June 2020, more than 6.60 million cases
have been reported across 188 countries and territories, resulting in more than 390,000
deaths. More than 2.83 million people have recovered]. The virus is primarily spread
between people during close contact, most often via small droplets produced by coughing,
sneezing, and talking. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are no
vaccines nor specific antiviral treatments for COVID-19. WHO declared the pandemic
on March 11, 2020. [2]

2. Methods and Results

The COVID 19 pandemic is causing to the healthcare system extreme strains as the
infection spreads rapidly and the cases increase exponentially when there is no social
distancing measures and hygiene protection. A few of the infected cases will require
intensive care treatment and the lack of it will cause death. Even with ICU treatment the
lack of successful specific therapeutic scheme may be prolong the survival of the infected
case, but a large percentage may suffer death in the end. Clinical treatment is greatly
facilitated with Informatics [3] assistance when EHR systems [4] exist providing the full
1
Corresponding Author, John Mantas, Professor in Health Informatics at the National and Kapodistrian
University of Athens, Papadiamantopoulou 123, Greece; E-mail: jmantas@nurs.uoa.gr
488 J. Mantas / The Importance of Health Informatics in Public Health

profile of the patient (hence, timely pinpointing comorbidities) and Decision Support
Systems assist the healthcare professionals in the treatment in a very hectic and under
pressure environment. Furthermore, telehealth, remote patient monitoring, patient
engagement, AI-based drug discovery, precision medicine, and bioinformatics, clinical
surveillance, and predictive modelling [5] are the unique Informatics supporting
clinicians, biologists, epidemiologists, public health experts, and policy makers.

3. Discussion and Conclusions

It has been shown, so far, that the only effective protection from COVID-19 infection is
the social distancing, personal hygiene, and societal and country lockdown. As these
extreme measures cannot be applied for prolonged time, due to the social character of
the human beings, and hard economic effects to the world economy, it seems that at least
a second wave of the spread is unavoidable in the next months. This kind of infectious
diseases either disappear by themselves or become endemic with seasonal and regional
appearances for many years, or they can be sufficiently treated when drugs will be
invented. The hope for a successful vaccine that will totally erase the threat may still be
far away.
The Medical Informatics and Nursing Informatics community [6], [7] play an
important role by supporting the clinicians in using all the appropriate tools and methods
to facilitate improved diagnosis and therapy of their patients. Whereas, Health
Informatics is supporting epidemiologists, biostatisticians, public health experts and
policy makers in providing tools and methods in collecting massive big data, analysing
them, visualizing the data and the information, comparing, planning, and designing
epidemiological and policy making approaches. Those scientific and evidence-based
methodologies have been highly effective in challenging the fake news stories, the
misinformation, and disinformation or the spread of it through the internet and the social
media, which is now called infodemic.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to express his sincere gratitude and admiration to all Clinicians,
Nurses, and Physicians for their dedication in treating the COVID-19 patients under
extreme difficult circumstances all over the world.

References

[1] Wikipedia. Coronavirus disease 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019

[2] World Health Organization. WHO Timeline - COVID-19. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-
2020-who-timeline---covid-19
[3] Mantas J. Future trends in Health Informatics--theoretical and practical. 2004; Studies in health
technology and informatics 109, 114-127
[4] Mantas J. Electronic health record. 2002; Studies in health technology and informatics 65, 250-257
[5] HIT Consultant. COVID-19 Outbreak: The Opportunity & Importance of Health Informatics.
https://hitconsultant.net/2020/04/21/covid-19-importance-of-health-informatics/#.XtmJWkUzZPY
[6] Hovenga EJS, Mantas J. Global health informatics education. 2004; IOS Press, Amsterdam.
[7] Mantas J. Developing curriculum in nursing informatics in Europe. International journal of medical
informatics. 1998; 50 (1-3), 123-132.