Dr. Iain Buchan
Dr. Iain Buchan is at the center of efforts to make Northern England a world leader in health informatics research aimed at improving public health. His work to create a network of Connected Health Cities (CHCs) devoted to integrating healthcare, social service, and civic data with the aim of improving the health of local communities is at the cutting-edge of precision public health. Dr. Buchan is also addressing the issue of public trust in the field of health informatics head-on with creative and innovative civic engagement programs.
The recently launched Connected Health Cities project is a collaboration between leading universities, healthcare providers, local health authorities, and private companies – advancing digital health in place-based, multi-sector partnerships for populations of 2-5 million citizens. The UK is piloting this approach across North England (with a total population of 17 million), which the epicenter of its health informatics research. Coordinated from a hub in Manchester, four city regions make up the CHCs, which are organized around the central goals of (1) developing an informatics system capable of continually improving care services and health, (2) building public trust in the safe and responsible use of health data, and (3) stimulating the digital health economy with new technological innovations.
Connected Yorkshire’s project on childhood obesity is just one example of how CHCs are using data to better understand a major public health issue. The project is linking data from the Born in Bradford birth cohort study with maternity services data from the National Health Service, data on educational attainment and growth in schools linked to the National Child Measurement Programme, and social network data about children, their families, and their interactions in the community. By bringing together these disparate datasets, researchers will be able to gain a clearer picture of how childhood obesity develops in local contexts and how to ‘sharpen’ public health interventions in terms of timing, personalization, and community-integration.
All the Connected Health Cities will be developing and sharing smartphone apps to collect additional behavioral data for research and to support healthier behaviors in public health programs. These include competitions between cities to lower the average resting heart rate and using a combination of broadcast media and networked apps to increase physical activity levels among audiences at sports games.
Dr. Buchan is committed to ensuring that communities have confidence in the CHCs’ use of health data. To build this trust, CHCs are holding “Citizens’ Juries,” giving ordinary citizens the opportunity to express their thoughts about the potential to share health records across Northern England. In this way, local individuals are included in the research design process, and they help define the direction and priorities of the CHCs’ future projects. With these types of creative solutions to public concerns about privacy, Dr. Buchan is demonstrating how precision public health can safely and responsibly leverage data to improve the health of all citizens.
