Public Health Informatics

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Running head: Public Health Informatics
PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATICS

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Public Health Informatics
Introduction
Health informatics pertains to a rapidly expanding field of science that involves the use of
computer technology for various purpose in advance medicine and healthcare. In order to
define it simply, it could be said that it refers to the application of information technology in
healthcare. The aims are to combine and utilize information collected from various domains
related to healthcare and put them to relevant use in technical, clinical and administrative
departments.
Within the scope of this report, the use of a media tool, such as Twitter will be reviewed for
its role in public health and public informatics. In order to produce a succinct study, three
Twitter accounts, @UKHIP, @pahowho and @TheMarmotReview, were studied for a
minimum of four weeks to understand how they utilise the social media tool to spread
awareness about health and welfare. The report includes a brief summary of their activity and
an assessment of their impact.
@UKHIP is the account of the “Health Informatics professionals in the UK” created in
September 2014. It deals with everything related to healthcare and IT, e-health reports and
other interesting news. The account is highly active and they tweet about 10-20 posts and
reshares in a day for their health and IT professionals. The account is not limited to news
pertaining to the only UK as they reshare significant health and IT relevant news from all
over the world, Thus, creating a generous database of global literature regarding health
informatics. Their most common tweets were about the definition of health informatics, as it
is yet a novel and upcoming field of science. It provides career and education related
information like school programs and degrees or competencies granted by them. For
professionals, who are already in touch with this field, it relays diploma programs for
specialisation in about cybersecurity in health, leading experts of different departments of
health informatics and their work, emerging concerns of this field and various awards,
workshops being held. It also acts as a job portal by providing pertinent information about the
job market and position currently available or will be in demand in future.
@pahowho is the oldest agency related to public health and has been in service since the year
1902. As their name suggests, the regional office of this agency is located in WHO. They
promote universal healthcare and raise awareness among the public regarding positive health
beliefs and health attitudes. Their twitter account was made on February 2009 and their
regular activity consists of 5 – 10 tweets a day. They inform their audience about the