Case-Based Learning in Public Health Informatics

The public health landscape is undergoing profound changes, including rapid advances in technology, increasing use of electronic health records, and health reform. Improving population health requires knowledge and skills in managing and working within the adaptive complexity of underlying societal structures and functions. These advances in technology, and profound changes within these structures and functions, introduce enormous opportunities for creating efficiencies and economies of scale, not simply for improving public health practice, but for learning as well. Finding informatics solutions to cross-cutting information needs, while solving complex health problems, requires cross-disciplinary education, research, and practice.