Fighting Diabetes with Information: Where Social Informatics Meets Health Informatics

Abstract

This abstract sets out a research agenda for information scientists and technologists interested in the interrelationships among patients, health care providers, and information technology. Using the complex and costly diagnosis of diabetes as a vehicle for exploration, this work suggests addressing a set of problems that will improve the lives of patients, their families, and friends, as well as making the provision of diabetes care more effective and cost efficient. Information technology tools and methods are used, but with sensitivity to the social and organization complexities of health care. I-Schools graduates, with their interdisciplinary mindset, social science methodologies, and familiarity with IT and its applications can increase the success rate of IT interventions in health care. Topics include public health and community informatics, knowledge dissemination, information alerts, decision support, clinical guidelines, health literacy, patient, pharmacy, and laboratory feedback systems, interface design, reminder systems, consumer informatics, and privacy and security issues.