Spring 2004 Public Health Magazine: Instamatic Informatics

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Instamatic Informatics

Epidemiologist Barbara Massoudi discovers how the nascent discipline
of informatics is bringing efficiency and speed to public health practice and research.

With a Phd in epidemiology, Barbara Massoudi had no intention of taking more courses—ever. Then she encountered informatics, the application of computer science information systems and technology to public health practice and research. This emerging field is increasingly important in safeguarding the public’s health, and it launched Massoudi, a widely published epidemiologist who has collaborated on several large, multi-center studies, in a new direction. She earned her graduate certificate in Public Health Informatics from the Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH) this spring.

“Epidemiologists can impact the health of a lot of people, and that was rewarding for me,” says Massoudi. “But as I learned more about informatics, I realized that by helping epidemiologists, biostatisticians, and front-line public health workers do their jobs better, I can touch the lives of even more people.”

Massoudi has served plenty of time in the public health trenches, working as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer at CDC and for Northrop Grumman Corporation as an epidemiologist contracted to CDC. Northrop Grumman, which employs more public health informatics specialists than any other institution in the world, has more than 750 employees contracted out to the CDC—about 100 public health researchers and 650 information and computer scientists.

Informatics aficionado Barbara Massoudi leads the Science and Technology Solutions Group for Northrop Grumman Corporation, which employs more public health informatics specialists than any other institution in the world.

While Massoudi was working on a multi-center CDC study in nutrition and physical activity, she ran into persistent “informational challenges. I thought it would be great to have common processes worked out between the centers in the study,” she says. “The more I learned about informatics, I could see just how much more smoothly the study could have gone with some of this technology.”

Informatics applies the principles of information systems and computer science to public health, providing reliable “just in time” information to scientists and the public. It also helps public health workers create information storage systems that make sense. For example, informatics applications can make a multi-center study more organized and much easier to analyze by providing better and more uniform data collection. Rather than individual study sites developing their own way of collecting and collating data, informatics specialists can create a centralized website with secure access for a study and uniform, consistent ways of entering data. It can also contain contact and other useful information for each site, all in the same place.

“We can create a centralized repository for all the information associated with a project,” Massoudi says. “Scientists can post and report study results and enter and store all the data for the whole study here. Then, everything they need is right at their fingertips.”

A snapshot of the life cycle of a study
Identifying new technologies to help public health workers do their jobs more efficiently and effectively is the prime objective of public health informatics.

“It can help public health work be much more efficient and can provide ways for organizations to share data and results for the greater public good,” says Massoudi. “Database management is part of it. So is GIS (Geographic Information Systems). Informatics encompasses the whole life cycle of a study—from requirements for data collection, to collating the data in consistent ways, to getting the results out to the other scientists and the public in ways they can use. Northrop Grumman is involved in all aspects of informatics—developing new systems, testing them, and finally rolling them out so they can be most useful.”

The more Massoudi learned about public health informatics, the more interested she became. “It’s an exciting new area of public health, and I could see great career opportunities involving informatics,” she says. After she met Vicki Hertzberg, director of the Public Health Informatics program at RSPH, at a conference, there was no turning back.

While working full-time for Northrop Grumman, she enrolled in one class each semester for the past three years to earn her informatics certificate. Northrop Grumman’s tuition reimbursement program for employees funded her coursework. She is a public health informatics specialist, leading the company’s Science and Technology Solutions Group and also coordinating outreach.

“I work with all of our contract projects at CDC to provide guidance and make sure informatics is appropriately and correctly applied,” she says. “The challenge is to make more public health people aware of informatics and how to incorporate it into their work.”

Massoudi recently helped Northrop Grumman and RSPH work out a memo of understanding “to facilitate and promote the field of public health informatics.” Her company also has donated money to help support RSPH informatics student scholarships, purchase books for an informatics book collection, and purchase textbooks on informatics for the Hubert Humphrey fellows studying at the RSPH to take back to their home countries after completion of their fellowships.

Massoudi also developed a paid informatics student practicum experience at Northrop Grumman, in which four students have participated so far. “I act as their adviser,” she says. “Then I go to CDC and match them up with people who need their help with informatics. It’s a triple win.”

By Valerie Gregg