{"id":982,"date":"2007-07-20T18:58:11","date_gmt":"2007-07-21T02:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/2007\/07\/20\/public-health-and-information-technology\/"},"modified":"2007-07-20T18:58:11","modified_gmt":"2007-07-21T02:58:11","slug":"public-health-and-information-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/2007\/07\/20\/public-health-and-information-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Health and Information Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Udell posted the transcript of his conversation<\/a> with Dr. Joel Selanikio (who, as the co-founder of DataDyne<\/a>, is in the business of collecting public health data in developing countries) last Thursday, which I believe was right about the same time I finished a book I picked up at my parents house while on vacation. My dad is the public health officer for Mono County<\/a> in California and can’t leave a bookstore without buying a couple books. He just so happened to have a book written by Tracy Kidder<\/a> (author of The Soul Of A New Machine<\/a>, among other books) titled ‘Mountains Beyond Mountains: Healing the World: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer<\/a>, which is the story of one Dr. Paul Farmer<\/a> and his quest to <\/p>\n

“… make a difference in solving global health problems through a clear-eyed understanding of the interaction of politics, wealth, social systems and disease.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a tremendous book and Jon’s blog post reminded me that I dog-eared a couple pages from the book that I wanted to note here for posterity and also that I was bothered while reading the book that information technology seemed not to have a role in Dr. Farmer’s plans for improving international public health. It’s fitting that one of the sayings that Dr. Farmer is fond of using (from page 177) is: <\/p>\n

On what data exactly do you base that statement?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

because Dr. Selanikio seems to have the same opinion: <\/p>\n

Well, in clinical medicine, the way that we understand things is \u00e2\u20ac\u201d if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a rash, I look at the rash, I think about it, I look stuff up, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t systematically create a database. For one patient you can juggle the variables in your head. But when you have a population of affected people, you need to collect data and analyze it. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the basis of epidemiology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So there ya go… information technology does have a place. <\/p>\n

If you’re interested in the data collection that DataDyne does, check out these YouTube video interviews that Dr. Joel Selanikio did this last May:<\/p>\n