Public Health Decision Support Systems

Decision-making by public health leaders requires data, information, and knowledge. Information systems that support transformation of data into information and knowledge, and that inform decision-making processes, are referred to as decision support systems (DSS). There exist a variety of DSS in clinical and public health contexts. For example, clinical DSS aid physicians in diagnosing a patient or prevent the prescribing of a medication that might cause harm. Public health DSS inform population health decisions, such as calculation of vaccination levels in a community or which areas in a community might benefit most from a mobile prevention clinic. The information and communications technologies (ICT) components for clinical and public health DSS are the same, even though they might be deployed in different ways to achieve better outcomes for individuals and populations. This chapter defines the concepts and components of DSS. The chapter also distinguishes between clinical and public health uses of DSS as well as the challenges with implementing DSS in real-world settings.