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. 2020 Nov 1;27(11):1798-1801.
doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocaa175.

A call for social informatics

Matthew S Pantell  1   2 , Julia Adler-Milstein  3   4 , Michael D Wang  3   4 , Aric A Prather  2   5 , Nancy E Adler  1   2   5   6 , Laura M Gottlieb  2   6   7
Affiliations

A call for social informatics

Matthew S Pantell et al. J Am Med Inform Assoc. .

Abstract

As evidence of the associations between social factors and health outcomes continues to mount, capturing and acting on social determinants of health (SDOH) in clinical settings has never been more relevant. Many professional medical organizations have endorsed screening for SDOH, and the U.S. Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has recommended increased capacity of health information technology to integrate and support use of SDOH data in clinical settings. As these efforts begin their translation to practice, a new subfield of health informatics is emerging, focused on the application of information technologies to capture and apply social data in conjunction with health data to advance individual and population health. Developing this dedicated subfield of informatics-which we term social informatics-is important to drive research that informs how to approach the unique data, interoperability, execution, and ethical challenges involved in integrating social and medical care.

Keywords: health informatics; health information technology; social determinants of health; social needs.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Number of social informatics publications by year, 1995-2019 (source: PubMed search on June 12, 2020). The search used the following terms: ((((((application, medical informatics[MeSH Terms]) OR (applications, medical informatics[MeSH Terms])) OR (bio informatics[MeSH Terms])) OR (clinical informatics[MeSH Terms])) OR (computing, medical informatics[MeSH Terms])) AND ((((“social determinants of health”[Title/Abstract]) OR (“social risk factors”[Title/Abstract])) OR (“social needs”[Title/Abstract])) OR (“social risks”[Title/Abstract])))).
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