A proposed national research and development agenda for population health informatics: summary recommendations from a national expert workshop

Abstract

Objective: The Johns Hopkins Center for Population Health IT hosted a 1-day symposium sponsored by the National Library of Medicine to help develop a national research and development (R&D) agenda for the emerging field of population health informatics (PopHI).

Material and methods: The symposium provided a venue for national experts to brainstorm, identify, discuss, and prioritize the top challenges and opportunities in the PopHI field, as well as R&D areas to address these.

Results: This manuscript summarizes the findings of the PopHI symposium. The symposium participants' recommendations have been categorized into 13 overarching themes, including policy alignment, data governance, sustainability and incentives, and standards/interoperability.

Discussion: The proposed consensus-based national agenda for PopHI consisted of 18 priority recommendations grouped into 4 broad goals: (1) Developing a standardized collaborative framework and infrastructure, (2) Advancing technical tools and methods, (3) Developing a scientific evidence and knowledge base, and (4) Developing an appropriate framework for policy, privacy, and sustainability. There was a substantial amount of agreement between all the participants on the challenges and opportunities for PopHI as well as on the actions that needed to be taken to address these.

Conclusion: PopHI is a rapidly growing field that has emerged to address the population dimension of the Triple Aim. The proposed PopHI R&D agenda is comprehensive and timely, but should be considered only a starting-point, given that ongoing developments in health policy, population health management, and informatics are very dynamic, suggesting that the agenda will require constant monitoring and updating.

Keywords: informatics agenda; population health informatics; public health informatics.

Figure 1A.

The varying contexts of population health informatics, public health informatics, and clinical informatics. EHR, electronic health record; HIT, health information technology. ^aThere are no clear boundaries for the intervention targets. Interventions are ordered by the most to the least common target constituents. See Figure 1B for a visual representation of the overlapping intervention targets. Figure 1B Schematic diagram, adapted from the Institute of Medicine’s participating constituents of primary care, depicting the overlapping intervention targets listed in Figure 1A. ^bTotal population of a geographical boundary (eg, a community surrounding a provider), regardless of their attribution to an individual entity (eg, a healthcare provider or an employer). ^cTarget population attributed to an individual entity (eg, a healthcare provider or an employer). In the case of a healthcare provider, the target population will be the entire denominator of their patients or parts of it.

Figure 2.

Overview of key symposium recommendations for a national PopHI R&D agenda. ^aThe first three categories include key recommendations with policy, privacy and sustainability components; however, these key items were categorized in different groups, due to their focus on those topics. ACO, Accountable Care Organization; CS, computer science; GIS, geographic information system; HIE, health information exchange; IDS, integrated delivery system/network; PopHI, population health informatics; R&D, research and development.