Informatics for Consumer Health

Informatics for Consumer Health (ICH) is a government initiative coordinated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH). ICH focuses on a coordination of health information, technology, and health care delivery that empowers providers to manage care and increases the ability of consumers to gain mastery over their own health. The ICH online initiative involved stakeholders from various sectors—commercial IT, government, health care, education, research, and advocacy—exchanging ideas and resources to bridge information technology and health care with the goal of improving behavioral support for all consumers. The Informatics for Consumer Health field is related to health informatics, medical informatics, consumer health informatics, eHealth, and health information technology.

Changing health behaviors is key to improving health outcomes. Research indicates that changes in basic preventive behavior - smoking cessation, better diet and exercise, and routine screenings—can lead to potential reductions in disability and death due to cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Effective consumer health information technology (health IT) applications hold great promise for encouraging and supporting behavior change.

With the behavioral and population health evidence-base as a backdrop, the “Informatics for Consumer Health” came out of to two events that occurred in 2009. The first event occurred in early 2009, when the U.S.-based National Research Council released a report titled “Computational Technology for Effective Healthcare: Immediate Steps and Future Directions”. This report concluded that many of the current deployments of health information technology had become disconnected from their primary objectives: to ensure the health of real consumers in real world settings. The research portfolio in health systems should be rebalanced, authors of the report argued, to emphasize cognitive support for providers, patients, and their families over technology development for its own sake.

The second event occurred in March 2009, when the U.S. Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. Title XIII of the Act, also referred to as the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, gave authority to the Department of Health and Human Services to offer incentives. “Meaningful use”, rather than “use” measured in technological terms, was to be gauged in terms of outcomes for patients and their families.

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