Julie Jacko: Health Informatics for the Advancement of Public Health

No aspect of human life has escaped the impact of the Information Age, and perhaps in no area of life is information more critical than in health and medicine. As computers have become available for all aspects of human endeavors, there is now a consensus that a systematic approach to health informatics — the acquisition, management, and use of information in health — can greatly enhance the quality and efficiency of medical care and the response to widespread public health emergencies. Dr. Julie Jacko is a Professor of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, who is committed to the advancement of public health and community health through technology. Before coming to Minnesota, Julie Jacko was a professor of biomedical engineering with a joint appointment as professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Emory University School of Medicine.

Julie Jacko’s research accomplishments span the fields of human-computer interaction, health informatics, and technological aspects of health care delivery, and universal access to electronic information technologies. The emergence of public health informatics as a professional specialty is part of a larger development of informatics in related health fields, such as medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and dentistry claims Julie Jacko. Julie Jacko has an exemplary research track record spanning a period of 17 years in which over 160 scientific publications have been generated in these research areas. According to Julie Jacko, Health informatics can be applied in many ways in the healthcare system especially because records have to be kept and information relayed from medical practitioners to their patients or even between colleagues at work.

The IT system will be more organized which will mean that clinical records can be easily accessed by different practitioners at different locations. Patients can also be able to access medical records electronically. With this type of setups medical institutions can as well benefit in terms of researches says Julie Jacko. Julie Jacko is author or co-author of over 100 research publications including journal articles, books, book chapters and conference proceedings. The mission of her journal is to satisfy the growing need for public health informatics knowledge portal and knowledge base of best practices among health practitioners, researchers, educators, and policy makers in developed and developing countries.