Public Health Informatics

Public Health Informatics (PHI) is the science of applying information-age technology to serve the specialized needs of public health. PHI is ¡°the systematic application of information and computer science and technology to public health practice, research and learning.¡± As a discipline, PHI focuses on the information science and technology applications that are relevant to public health, while always keeping in mind that:

- The primary focus of public health is to promote the health of populations and not the health of specific individuals.
- The primary strategy of public health is prevention of disease and injury by altering the conditions or the environment that put populations at risk.
- Public health professionals explore the potential for prevention at all vulnerable points in the causal chains leading to disease, injury, or disability; public health activities are not restricted to particular social, behavioural, or environmental contexts.
- Public health interventions must reflect the governmental context in which public health is practiced.

We are using the broadest definition of Public Health Informatics, which also covers applications, systems, services and solutions with noticeable impacts on communities (including patient communities, older populations, etc.) and/or on health and social care systems and services. Prospective authors are invited to submit manuscripts on related topics, including, but not limited to, Internet-based public education and outreach; telehealthcare and domotic services for populations with special needs; real-time outbreak and disease surveillance; Internet-based engagement and empowerment of citizens and communities, including Social Web applications; e-epidemiology; privacy-preserving solutions for public health studies that involve person-identifiable data (e.g., home addresses), etc.

• - free for readers, with low publishing fees paid by authors or their institutions
• Rapid publication: accepted papers are immediately published online (we started to publish papers quickly since September 2008). The printed edition will only be continued for the Proceedings of the yearly International Symposiums on Recent Advances in Environmental Health Research starting 2009.