Reply To: Topic 1 Introduction to PHI

[Supida Bamrungtrakulsuk]

As a biomedical research assistant experienced in cellular/molecular research and vector surveillance, my background knowledge and skills are mainly in biological laboratory and partially in entomological research. Even though my current job isn’t directly correlated with public health/healthcare/IT professionals (as classmates), it is somehow similar to health informaticians. Working on data management of insectary and surveillance data is new and very challenging for me who have limited knowledge and experience related to data and IT. I usually face a problem when trying to design and implement new tools to facilitate the workload of lab staff and increase their productivity, such as digitizing paper-based records, collecting data via electronic application, and automating the request approval process. Apart from that, I spend most of the time on data analysis and data visualization of surveillance data to interpret insights of data. Therefore, to achieve my profession in health informatics and to work with data/information more efficiently and more productively, I need to gain more knowledge and skills in all aspects of public health practice and system, management, social science, and especially information technology (data standards, database, data privacy and security, system design and implementation, and data analysis etc.).