This panel will present case studies from three CDC-funded Research Centers of Excellence in Public Health Informatics (PHI) in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Utah, to illustrate what national, state, and local factors can accelerate PHI innovation and address barriers of collaboration between public health practitioners and academic researchers. Presented examples range from data for developing electronic surveillance and case reporting to master person index for health information exchanges and more.

This panel will present case studies from three Research Centers of Excellence (COE) in Public Health Informatics (PHI) to illustrate what national, state, and local factors can accelerate PHI innovation and address barriers of collaboration between public health practitioners and academic researchers. Sundak Ganesan, MD, SME Staff for CDC CSTE ELR Taskforce Workgroup has been leading various communities of practice supporting ELR/Case Reporting, will moderate this panel and highlight the importance of collaboration between local, state, and CDC programs, CSTE, APHL, SDOs, Meaningful-Use workgroups, Universities, vendors and CDC-funded COEs.

Dr. Michael Wagner, director of the Pittsburgh COE will review the range of organizations and types of prefessionals that must work together to develop and translate new innovations in disease surveillance into practice. To explore the role of public health practitioners, he will use, as a concrete example, the problem of getting data on which disease surveillance depends from the healthcare system and other sources.

Joseph Gibson, PhD, Epidemiologist of the Marion County Public Health Department (serving Indianapolis) and the University of Indiana COE, will describe the partnership development between MCPHD, Regenstrief's researchers, and the Indiana Department of Public Health.  He examines what in that partnership has been important in creating the new informatics tools that they have adopted. He will demonstrate how increased contact between researchers, practitioners, and IT developers has led to these tools or increased their value. He will also introduce the newly formed Community of Innovators in Epidemiology and PHI.

Wu Xu, PhD, Public Health Informaticist, Utah Department of Health and University of Utah COE, will use Utah’s examples to discuss that understanding partner-organization’s “space” and process is crucial for success of practitioner-participated researches. Based on managing Utah’s innovation portfolio, university and public health partners have jointly developed a COE management framework: PHI Innovation Spaces and Stages.