Consumer Health Informatics in Public Health: Applications and Opportunities

Objective:Consumer health informatics (CHI) empowers consumers to improve their health using evolving information and communication technologies. We discuss outcomes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expert panel meeting on the use of CHI in public health, exploring the potential for CHI tools to benefit individual health, healthcare, and public health with respect to diabetes.

Methods:The rapid proliferation of CHI tools has occurred with limited long-term planning or collaboration. To address this lack of strategic planning the CDC convened an expert panel meeting on May 14, 2008. The objectives of the meeting were to (1) examine CHI as a means to impact individual health, healthcare, and public health; (2) identify key themes at the intersection of CHI and public health; (3) identify critical gaps in CHI research and application; and (4) clarify the roles of key stakeholders. We summarize and report meeting discussions and employ examples from the diabetes literature to explore the potential of CHI to improve public health through diabetes prevention and care. 

Results:By facilitating healthy choices, improving prevention or management of illness, and increasing the quality and efficiency of clinical care, CHI tools that are implemented on a broad scale can impact public health.

Conclusion:To optimize public health benefits, increasing efforts should be made to evaluate CHI tools, identify needs and disparities, improve reach and effectiveness, and establish standards and guidelines.