TRANSFORM

ING HEALTH
INFORMATIC
S RESEARCH
INTO
PRACTICE

ALLAN KARL N. YNGENTE

HEALTH INFORMATICS RESEARCH

• Healthcare informatics research is a scientific endeavor

that applies information science, computer technology,
and statistical modeling techniques to develop decision
support systems for improving both health service
organizations' performance and patient care outcomes
(Wan, 2006).
HEALTH
INFORMATICS
RESEARCH

• Health informatics research is an

interdisciplinary approach,
wherein healthcare experts,
program developers,
informaticists, and others, can
design data-driven solutions to
existing systemic challenges or
provide recommendations for
enhanced delivery of care.
RESEARCH ON IMPROVING NURSING
CURRICULA
• The nursing informatics is an important part of the health science
curriculum on many levels of nursing programs across the world.
Sweeping changes in health care gives urgency to the call to
transform nursing curricula so that new competencies could more
closely match practical needs. This was essentially true here in the
PH when the nursing informatics syllabus was included in the 2008
curriculum. (As early as 1990s research on NI for curricular
integration was already done.)
HEALTH INFORMATICS RESEARCH

ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS

Electronic health records, personal health records, and
electronic medical records are interrelated areas that are
highly researched nowadays. The research spans usability,
interoperability, and integration of systems. Specific areas
include decision support and intelligent capabilities of
systems.
HEALTH INFORMATICS RESEARCH

HEALTH DATA ANALYTICS

Data analytics is the future of health and health care. It is no longer
possible for people to navigate the complexities of health and
medical disciplines without data analytics. Interests span a wide range
of topics including comparative effectiveness, causality, knowledge
discovery from data, predictive modeling, and anomaly detection. In
data analytic efforts, we closely collaborate with experts in health
services research, health administration, and health policy.
HEALTH INFORMATICS RESEARCH
DATA MINING AND MACHINE LEARNING IN HEALTHCARE
Data mining is a process of discovering new interesting patterns and
regularities in data. Data mining methods applied in health care help
clinicians and administrators extend their knowledge and help
decision making by sifting through large amounts of data. Machine
learning is a related field that concerns creating learning capabilities
in computers. By observing the environment, interacting with users,
or analyzing past data, computer algorithms learn how to solve
problems and aid decision makers by providing decision support.
HEALTH INFORMATICS RESEARCH

ONTOLOGY-BASED DATA INTEGRATION

The ability to resolve semantic conflicts between
heterogeneous information systems is one of the major
challenges in the data integration field. Most research aims
to achieve semantic interoperability across systems using
an ontology-based system.
EXAMPLE OF
ONTOLOGY BASED
DATA INTEGRATION

• involves the use of one

or more ontology to
effectively combine
data or information
from multiple
heterogeneous
sources.
HEALTH INFORMATICS RESEARCH

CONSUMER HEALTH INFORMATICS AND PATIENT GENERATED DATA

The focus of this project is to understand consumer health
communities, as well patient generated data and its uses within and
outside healthcare systems. This topic spans a wide range of issues
from policy, privacy and security, through potential uses and
requirements, to technical issues in Big Data analytics.
HEALTH INFORMATICS RESEARCH

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION & HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT

Research in this area seeks to understand the factors that
affect technology adoption. Here the focus is mainly on
health care organizations and the users, mostly health care
professionals, of new health information technologies. The
research draws from different fields such as communication
science and management to understand factors that
impede technology adoption in the health care industry.
HEALTH INFORMATICS RESEARCH
DECISION SUPPORT
Research focuses on decision models under mixed uncertainty: risk,
ambiguity and ignorance. For many complex decisions especially in
health care, the quantification of relevant uncertainty in terms of
probability is unreliable and even impossible. In such situations,
recommendations from traditional decision models using probability
are not accepted by decision makers. Research aims to develop a
unified model for decisions under uncertainty that can deal not only
with risk but also with ambiguity and ignorance that decision makers
encounter in their practice.
TRANSFORMING HEALTH INFORMATICS
RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE

There are two key tasks for those primarily engaged in researching
and teaching evidence production and use for policy and practice,
which are to (1) identify and share key lessons more effectively and
(2) to build a community enabling transdisciplinary evidence to be
produced and used, which addresses real gaps in the evidence base
and helps decision-makers transform society for the better.
TRANSFORMING HEALTH INFORMATICS RESEARCH
INTO PRACTICE

• While it is true that there has been a lot of research and

development initiatives towards integrating health informatics
evidence towards practice, many problematic issues still arise
further impeding effective acquisition of new technology and
practice. Most of the problems came from existing internal
challenges everyone is inevitably exposed to within the
organization.
 FACTORS
INHIBITING
EFFECTIVE
DISSEMINATION
OF EVIDENCE-
BASED
INTERVENTION
COMMON AREAS OF HEALTH
INFORMATICS APPLICATION IN HOSPITAL
SETTING
• Documentation
• Staffing
• Evidence-based best practices
• Workflow and referral systems
REFERENCE:

• https://hap.gmu.edu/academics/health-informatics/health-informatics-research
• https://www.researchgate.net
/publication/7231337_Healthcare_Informatics_Research_From_Data_to_Evidence-Based_Management
• https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.28.021406.144145
• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0266-1/tables/1
END