School of Computing Seminar with Ian Brooks, University of Illinois

BUILDING INFORMATION SYSTEMS TO DETECT DISEASE OUTBREAKS AND SUPPORT PUBLIC HEALTH

Abstract:

Understanding the health of a community requires data and the information systems to make use of it. Traditionally this data has come from the health sector, but in today’s digital and highly connected world, this is not the only source and may not even be the best source. In this talk we will discuss alternative sources, including social media, sales, and cell phone data; their strengths and weaknesses; and the information systems being developed to deal with them.

Bio:

Ian Brooks, PhD, is the director of the Center for Health Informatics, a WHO Collaborating Center, at the University of Illinois. His research focuses on the use of data from traditional and non-traditional sources to understand population health and support public health decision makers. Previously, Brooks was the director of Health Sciences at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, co-director of the bioinformatics core of the UIC Center for Translational Science, and a member of the CDC external advisory committee for high-performance computing.

Host: Vernon Burton, vburton@clemson.edu, 217-649-0608