The MAV-ES Data Integration Approach for Decisional Information Systems (DIS): A Case on Epidemiologic Monitoring

2. Related Works

Among the determinants of health status, the health care systems and preventive care of diseases have become increasingly important. By emphasizing preventive activities, not only will there be long-term impact on the incidence of disease, but it can also lead to lowering the cost burden of disease care on society. Even so, diagnostic and therapeutic activities will alter disease prevalence and mortality; hence, these latter services are often viewed to be essential. Put together, the decision procedures for disease care are becoming increasingly complex. These decisions now require the inclusion of a growing number of considerations within increasingly advanced technological environments and must also combine a non-discriminative access to care of a constantly increasing quality to be effective.

Epidemiology is deemed essential for aiding today’s policy makers and public health professionals to think about multiple care related issues characterized by data-intensive extraction and aggregation when assessing emerging needs of public health concerns (Richard, Toubiana, Mignot et. al., 2005). Three key areas affect the complexity of epidemiological thinking. These include: (1) care provision, (2) the structuring of data collection for the care; and finally, (3) care decision making.