DENTAL INFORMATICS

• Elevating health in the climate debate : The climate crisis poses one of the biggest threats to both the planet and the health of the people who live on it.
• Delivering health in conflict and crisis : Despite stricter surveillance, many healthcare workers remain vulnerable.
• Making healthcare fairer : The gap between the haves and have-nots is growing, especially in terms of access to healthcare. 
•  Expanding access to medicines : Although many in the world take access to medication for granted, medicines and vaccines are not an option for almost one-third of the global population. The challenge of expanding access to medicines in areas where few, if any, healthcare products are available includes combating substandard and imitation medical products. 
• Stopping infectious diseases: Infectious diseases continue to kill millions of people, most of them poor. 
• Preparing for epidemics: Currently, more time and resources are spent reacting to a new strain of influenza or an outbreak of yellow fever, rather than preparing for future outbreaks. But it’s not a question of if a dangerous virus will come about – but when.
• Protecting people from dangerous products: Many poorer parts of the world face malnutrition and food insecurity, while at the same time, global obesity levels and diet-related problems are on the rise.
• Investing in the people who defend our health: Health workers are in short supply the world over. Sustainable health and social care systems depend on well-paid and properly trained staff who can deliver quality care. 
• Keeping adolescents safe: Policymakers, educators, and health practitioners need to promote positive mental health among adolescents, to prevent illicit drug use, alcohol abuse, and self harm. Programmes that raise awareness of things like contraception, sexually transmitted infections, and pregnancy care help address some of the underlying causes of adolescent fatalities.
• Earning public trust: Delivering safe, reliable healthcare to patients involves first gaining their confidence and trust; a trust which can be undermined by the rapid spread of misinformation on social media. 
• Since the 1960s, the development and use of health care information systems has changed dramatically with advances in technology and the impact of environmental influences and payment reform.
• In the 1960s to 1970s, health care executives invested primarily in administrative and financial information systems that could automate the patient billing process and facilitate accurate Medicare cost reporting. 
• The administrative applications that were used were generally found in large hospitals, such as those affiliated with academic medical centers. These larger health care organizations were often the only ones with the resources and staff available to develop, implement, and support such systems.
• It was common for these facilities to develop their own administrative and financial applications in-house in what were then known as “data processing” departments.
• Recognizing that small, community-based hospitals could not bear the cost of an in-house, mainframe system, leading vendors began to offer shared systems, so called because they enabled hospitals to share the use of a mainframe with other hospitals
• By the 1970s, departmental systems such as clinical laboratory or pharmacy systems began to be developed, coinciding with the advent of minicomputers
• Minicomputers were smaller and more powerful than some of the mainframe computers and available at a cost that could be justified by revenue-generating departments.
• The 1980s brought a significant turning point in the use of health care information systems primarily because of the   development of the microcomputer, also known as the personal computer (PC).
• In 1982, Medicare shifted from a cost-based reimbursement system to a prospective payment system based on diagnosis-related groups (DRGs).
• The microcomputer was smaller, often as or more powerful, and far more affordable than a mainframe computer. 
• Rapid technological advances continued into the 1990s, with the most profound being the evolution and widespread use of the Internet and electronic mail (e-mail).
• The Institute of Medicine (IOM, 1991) published its first landmark report The Computer-Based Patient Record: An Essential Technology for Health Care, which called for the widespread adoption of computerized patient records (CPRs) as the standard by the year 2001.
• CPRs were the precursor to what we refer to today as EHR systems.
• The Internet provided health care consumers, patients, providers, and industries with access to the World Wide Web and new and innovative opportunities to access care, promote services, and share information.
• By the start of the new millennium, health care quality and patient safety emerged as top priorities.
• In 2000, the IOM (Institute of Medicine) published the report To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health Care System, which brought national attention to research estimating that 44,000 to 98,000 patients die each year to medical errors.
• By 2009, the US government launched an “unprecedented effort to reengineer” the way we capture, store, and use health information. This effort was realized in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.
• Interest also grew in engaging patients more fully in providing access to their EHR through patient portals or the concept of a PHR (Patient Health Record). We have also seen significant advances in telemedicine and telehealth, cloud computing, and mobile applications that monitor and track a wide range of health data.
• Health care system – an organized plan of health services
• Health care delivery – rendering of the health care services to the people.
• Health care delivery system – the network of health facilities and personnel which carries out the task in rendering health care to the public.
• Health Care - The prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well-being through the services offered by the medical and allied health professions.
• • Health is a fundamental right
  • Issues: Gross inequality in the people’s health status which is not socially, economically, and politically acceptable
• Primary Health Care is an essential health care made universally acceptable to individuals and families in the community by means acceptable to them through their full participation and at a cost that the community and country and afford at every stage of development.
• • PHC is rooted in a commitment to social justice and equity and in the recognition of the fundamental right to the highest attainable standard of health
• HMN - Health Metrics Network
• 1. HIS Resources – includes framework on legislation, regulation, planning, and the resources required for the system to be fully functional (e.g. personnel, logistic support, financing, ICT, & the component’s coordinating mechanism)
• 1. Indicators– basis of HIS plan and strategy includes indicators and related target ( determinants of health; health system input, outputs, and outcomes; and the health status)
• 1. Data Sources – (1) population-based approach: civil registration, censuses, population survey (2) institution-based: individual records, resource records, service records
• 1. Data Management – handling of data from collection and storage to data flow and quality assurance, processing, compilation, and data analysis.