1. Public Health Informatics Capacity Building at Utah Department of Health
Wu Xu, Barry Nangle, Matthew Samore
David N. Sundwall
Utah Department of Health
University of Utah
The 2008 PHIN Conference
August 25, 2008

2. Special PHI Needs at States
Informatics staff shortage is a common barrier at all levels
Training offered by Universities is helpful but not adequate
How to improve current PHI capacity at states ASAP has not been discussed yet

3. Key Initiating Factors
Executive leadership from David N. Sundwall, MD, Executive Director for Utah Department of Health, President for ASTHO and a voting member on the NGA State Alliance for e-Health

4. Promote e-Health = Utah
Utah Department of Health Executive Director’s 2008 Priorities
Participate in Efforts to
Reform the Health Care System
Protect the Public’s Health
Our vision for Utah:
Promote
e-Health = Utah
Prevent Disease and Disability
Provide Access to
Appropriate Health Care
Services for Underserved Populations
06/20/2008

5. Key Initiating Factors
2. Financial and research support from CDC-funded Utah Research Center for Excellence (COE) in Public Health Informatics at University of Utah, P.I. Matthew Samore, MD.

6. PHI Workforce Building in Utah
Overall Strategies:
Create organizational changes
Create a new career track for PHI
Create a local PHI community
Integrate PHI through “Dynamic Planning” and “Strategic Doing”
Create a “Research Laboratory”

7. 1. Create organizational changes
The “e-Health=Utah” Steering Committee
Chaired by Executive Director, Includes all Deputy Directors, Division and Center Directors, State Epidemiologist, PHI Director, and IT Director from DTS
Coordinate enterprise-wide informatics initiatives
Lead the PHI capacity building

8. Office of Public Health Informatics
“Connector”
Organization: Divisions and external partners
Individual:
practitioners
&
researchers
“Incubator”
Research & Develop (R&D) new application or method then pass to practice

9. 2. Create a New Career Track
All IT personnel are centralized in DTS
No job classification for informaticians in state government.
Hard to recruit and maintain high quality personnel
Lack of PHI personnel to manage large IT projects was identified as the major risk factor for previous project failures

10. Missing Links Between IT & Public Health ProgramsBU BU RM RM
BU=Business Unit IT
RM=Business/IT Relationship Manager (The missing link in Utah) RM RM BU BU
Source: IT Governance by Peter Weill & Jeanne W. Ross, Harvard Business School Press, p. 62.

11. Proposed in Organizational Structure for Health Informaticians
PH/Epi
PH/Epi
Info.
Info.
PH=Public Health Program/ Epidemiologist
IT &
Informatics
Info.=Health Informatician
Info.
Info.
PH/Epi
PH/Epi
Source: Modified from IT Governance by Peter Weill & Jeanne W. Ross, Harvard Business School Press, p. 62.

12. Proposed Informatician Positions
Public Health Informaticians are applied scientists in the field.
Health Informatics Portfolio Manager II at the department level
Health Informatics Portfolio/Product Manager I at the division level
Health Informatician III
Health Informatician II
Health Informatician I
Info. PH
IT &

13. 3. Form a Local Community: Monthly Brown Bags
Provide a forum for peer interactions and informal training/learning
Share best practice, innovations, and lessons learned, which led to
Expanded the Best Practice
Facilitated joint grant application

14. 3. Local PHI Community: Recognition of Excellence
Goals:
Recognize excellence in state PHI practice of developing, operating, and maintaining public health information systems
Evolve general performance standards for PHI applications or systems
Progresses:
Formed an award committee
Proposed recognition standards

15. 4. Integrate PHI through
“Dynamic Planning”
“Strategic Doing”

16. Formed a small and open committee
“Dynamic Planning”
Formed a small and open committee
Disseminate working documents to directors and managers
Prioritize “initiatives” and “candidates”

17. Example for Initiatives: cHIE (the clinical Health Information Exchange)
Immunization
Registry
Newborn Hearing
Screening
Child Health
Advanced Records
Management
CHARM
OPHI/COE Participates
UT-NEDSS
UHIN-cHIE
Clinics
Labs
Hospitals 17

18. “Strategic Doing”
Statewide Master Patient Index for patient clinical information exchange for treatment purposes
Meta Data Registry to “discover” various public health data sources
and update the information
system inventory

19. 5. “PHI Research Laboratory”
Practitioners’ Perspective:
Doing PHI with researchers is an effective way of learning PHI
Public health can get cutting-edge applications timely
Researchers’ Perspective:
Create more research opportunities
Increase research impact by solving practical problems
Timely translate research finding into practice

20. 5. “Lab” Activities & Achievements
Weekly video conferencing between UDOH and UofU
UDOH benefits from joint projects:
Improve immunization registry’s record linkage
Public health grid demonstration (phGRID)
ELR and case notification reporting (RTCEND)
2nd and 3rd Place Poster Awards
at the 2007 PHIN

21. 5. Products from the “Lab”
Co-authored by the UofU and UDOH:
Manuscripts = 9
Invited Presentations = 2
Abstracts = 41

22. Summary of Changes
Public health informatics is becoming a profession at the State of Utah
Make PHI structure and management to fit the organizational structure and management philosophy and culture
Work with all levels on different aspects of changes

23. Impact of PHI Initiatives by UDOH Organizational Level
Source: Modified from Lorenzi & Riley’s “Public Health Informatics and Organizational Change”, pp in Public Health Informatics and Information Systems, 2003.

24. Let’s Build the PHI Workforce Together!
Contact Information
Wu Xu