Analytics and Pop Health

Promoting Dignity, Through Data Accuracy, For The Dead

By Paula Braun – All information captured on death certificates – such as race, gender, and marital status – matters. In my previous blog post, I wrote about the importance of the cause-of-death fields; however, every element of the certificate is important. Capturing the information timely and accurately is more than just an administrative requirement with public health benefits.

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Advancing Precision Medicine by Enabling a Collaborative Informatics Community

By Taha A. Kass-Hout, M.D., M.S., & David Litwack, Ph.D. – FDA plays an integral role in President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative, which foresees the day when an individual’s medical care will be tailored in part based on their unique characteristics and genetic make-up. Yet while more than 80 million genetic variants have been found in the human genome, we don’t understand the role that most of these variants play in health or disease.



Trajectory not Position

By John Halamka MD – At the moment in our society, there tends to be a general proclivity to be a criticizer rather than a doer, to tear down rather than build up, and to have hearings instead of taking individual action. Everyone talks about what has not been done instead of examining the progress made.


Is there a Difference Between Informatics and Data Science?

By William Hersh MD – I am increasingly asked to describe the difference between data science and biomedical informatics. Distinguishing these disciplines takes on added importance with the recent publication of the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director, National Library of Medicine (NLM) Working Group, report on the future of the NLM, which calls for NLM to become a leader in data science at NIH.




The Science of Population Health

By Sarianne Gruber – Having once been a graduate student in Epidemiology and Public Health, certain books still remain my bookshelf as iconic references for studying disease and our healthcare system. There is the bright orange, soft covered, Foundations of Epidemiology by the father and son team Abraham M. Lilienfeld and David E. Lilienfeld, a relic from the required reading list.