There are distinct benefits to public health professionals when using decision s
ID: 436776 • Letter: T
Question
There are distinct benefits to public health professionals when using decision support and expert systems. As discussed this week in the readings, the increased volume of data, the need for faster decision making, and the sharing of information to a broader audience more quickly are a few that can be realized.Review the short case on pages 510–511 of your O'Carroll course textbook. With these thoughts in mind:
Post a response by Day 4 to the following:
Summarize the benefits of using a decision support system as discussed in the case study. Support your response.
Explanation / Answer
The use of decision support systems in the public healthcare field have become more common as the amount of data that is available in the healthcare arena continues to increase with organizations needing better ways to be able to fashion raw data into information that can actually be used to drive decisions. A decision support system for use by the public health department would be a great solution to the current problem they are facing in regards to monitoring well water, streams and lakes for contaminants. While the information is currently gathered and submitted in a manual fashion the result of the test takes a considerable amount of time and does rely on the instinct of the person who is conducting the analysis. While many specialists may feel that the decision support system would undermine their role the opposite is true. Utilizing the DSS the specialist will be able to more quickly gather information and then have it automatically uploaded at which point the DSS can perform the necessary processing of the raw data into actionable metrics. There are a number of benefits to the DSS including the ability to detect anomalies in the data that may relate to a potential outbreak. Having this information will help public health professionals prepare for potential outbreaks and determine the types of questions that can be used to better understand when the potential for outbreak exist. Because the DSS contains the ability to more quickly gather and use valuable data there is a reduced need for the overhead and resources required by the manual process. Another significant benefit to the system is that all the collected information is available for all test sites almost immediately providing feedback to those who may be able to notice trends that exist in terms of contaminants and how best to approach their future test to those sites that may likely be contaminated. In this particular case we are actually assigning geographic or GIS data to our DSS (Megarai, 2008). For those who doubt the reliability of the system they must realize that the system is a decision support system and not an expert system designed to take expert knowledge and make the decision for them. A DSS drives better decisions by making information available to the person who ultimately makes actionable decisions.
GIS Applications in Public Health as Decision Making Support System. 2008. M.S. Mesgari. World Applied Sciences Journal. Retrieved August 7th, 2013 from http://www.idosi.org/wasj/wasj3(supplement%201)/11.pdf
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