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Biomedical subjects

H L Blum

Publications and source records attributed to H L Blum.

17 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1995

Public health informatics: how information-age technology can strengthen public health.

The combination of the burgeoning interest in health, health care reform and the advent of the Information Age, represents a challenge and an opportunity for public health. If public health's effectiveness and profile are to grow, practitioners and researchers will need reliable, timely information with which to make information-driven decisions, better ways to communicate, and improved tools to analyze and present new knowledge. "Public Health Informatics" (PHI) is the science of applying Information-Age technology to serve the specialized needs of public health. In this paper we define Public Health Informatics, outline specific benefits that may accrue from its widespread application, and discuss why and how an academic discipline of public health informatics should be developed. Finally, we make specific recommendations for actions that government and academia can take to assure that public health professionals have the systems, tools, and training to use PHI to advance the mission of public health.

Communication↗
PubMed1992

HOT: the emergence of health oriented telecommunication applications.

America has benefited from decades of outstanding health services. However, the American health system now is in crisis--with runaway medical cost inflation, hospital closures, and unacceptably high and increasing numbers of uninsured people. Key solutions for bringing the health system into balance remain untapped in the potentials of health-oriented telecommunication, or HOT applications. HOT applications could rally the immense unused personal resources of the public for improving their own health, help upgrade the delivery and efficiency of healthcare and its administration, and improve public health's ability to deal with present and emerging system-level problems impacting health.

Computer Communication Networks↗
PubMed1978

Does health planning work anywhere, and if so, why?

Beginning in 1976 the Department of Health Education and Welfare of the United States Government (DHEW) and the Pan American Health Organization, which is the regional office of the World Health Organization (PAHO-WHO), jointly developed a study of health planning as currently practiced around the world. This thrust to extend our understanding and capability of application of health planning was recognized at PAHO-WHO and DHEW as being long overdue, given the diversity of health planning efforts, the thinness of theory and the frequently unsatisfactory results of health sector planning in so many countries. In 1976 a series of descriptive-analytical studies were commissioned from 17 countries representing nearly every continent and every stage of development. These studies were further analyzed and abstracted and became the basis for a 5-day discussion in Copenhagen in 1977 among 35 practicing and academic health planners gathered from 16 countries, WHO, and DHEW. The thrust of the first assembly was to identify the determinants of (1) the establishment of formal health planning machinery, (2) the scope and content of concerns assigned to health planning, (3) the participants in the process, and (4) the relationships of planners to policy makers and implementors. In 1978 the second 5-day meeting was held in New Orleans to analyze the methodologies of health planning and to determine what could be generalized and disseminated as guidance to all countries. This was based on a new series of methodologically focused case studies which were abstracted and made available to each of the 53 health planning participants from 22 countries, PAHO-WHO, and DHEW. The four major foci of this conference were (1) the state of the art in health planning methodology, (2) how methods are being developed and adapted, (3) identification of major methodological shortcomings or constraints, and (4) surmounting the difficulties facing health planning in affecting major health-influencing forces which lie outside the territory traditionally considered to be part of the health sector. This article is a report on some of the things the author learned from participating in what he considers the two most informative planning meetings he ever attended.

Health Planning↗
PubMed1968

The scope and responsibility of medicine. A forum with a purpose.

To engender discussion of what the scope and responsibility of medicine ought to be in today's society, California Medicine printed in its June issue six essays by authors known to have keen if various interest in the subject. In presenting the essays the editors expressed hope that they would be the beginning of a forum from which a definition of our profession's responsibilities may be distilled. Readers were invited to take part in a continuation of the forum in succeeding issues. Following are four contributions selected from those received to date. Others will be published in the months ahead. If you have thoughts on the subject, just address them to the editors of California Medicine, 693 Sutter Street, San Francisco, California 94102. Keep your essays short, please.

Philosophy, Medical↗
PubMed1965

Genetic counseling, a health department service to physicians.

Questions about inheritance in all kinds of diseases and defects are commonly asked of nearly all physicians. In attempting to answer these questions, however, the physician is often hampered by lack of formal instruction in clinical genetics. Since the health department, if it is to carry out its epidemiologic function, must be as concerned over the increasing identification of genetic agents in disease as it is and has been over environmental disease agents, it should come to represent a source of assistance not now generally available to the physician. In short, as it carries out those activities by which its store of general genetic information is increased, and until other sources of genetic consultation become reasonably available, the health department can be of real service to physicians as a resource to which they may turn for help when dealing with families wanting genetic information. Such a service has been provided experimentally for the last two years by the Contra Costa County Health Department. This program calls for the taking of family pedigrees by public health nurses on families with questions of a genetic nature who are health department clients and on families who are referred by their private physicians for this service. An interpretation of each pedigree is made by the department's physician in charge of the program and submitted to the family's physician for his use in counseling the family. Evidence to date suggests the process can be a highly useful service to the practitioner and his patient.

California↗