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Methodology for Establishing a Community-Wide Life Laboratory for Capturing Unobtrusive and Continuous Remote Activity and Health Data
Published on: July 27, 2018
Development of an interactive environmental public health tracking system for data analysis, visualization, and
Thomas O Talbot1, Sanjaya Kumar, Gwen D Babcock
1Environmental Health Surveillance, Bureau of Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology, NYS Department of Health, Troy, NY 12180, USA. tot01@health.state.ny.us
Journal of Public Health Management and Practice : JPHMP
|October 14, 2008
Summary
A new interactive system links health and environmental data for public health tracking. This system enhances data analysis and visualization while protecting patient confidentiality.
Area of Science:
- Environmental health
- Public health surveillance
- Data management and analytics
Background:
- Routine collection of health outcomes and environmental hazard data by various agencies.
- Challenges in utilizing disparate data sources for environmental public health tracking due to data stewardship, confidentiality, and lack of interoperability.
- Limited availability and usability of current data analysis and visualization tools.
Purpose of the Study:
- To describe a user-friendly interactive system developed by the New York State Department of Health for environmental public health tracking.
- To demonstrate the system's capability to access, link, and analyze health and environmental data while ensuring confidentiality.
- To present the system's tools for describing geographic patterns, trends, and associations between health and environmental factors.
Main Methods:
- Development of an interactive system integrating health outcome data with environmental hazard and exposure information.
- Implementation of data linkage strategies that protect confidential patient information.
- Inclusion of user-friendly tools for data analysis, visualization, and reporting, including descriptive statistics and data smoothing techniques.
Main Results:
- A functional environmental public health tracking system providing a common user interface for accessing and linking diverse datasets.
- Tools enabling the description of geographic patterns, temporal trends, and statistical associations between health outcomes and environmental data.
- Automated techniques for data smoothing to protect patient confidentiality and reduce random fluctuations.
Conclusions:
- The developed system effectively integrates and links health and environmental data for public health tracking.
- The system provides valuable tools for analysis and visualization, facilitating a better understanding of environmental health impacts.
- User-friendly access and built-in confidentiality protections make the system a significant advancement for environmental public health surveillance.
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