The Louisiana Center for Health Informatics (LCHI) at
UL Lafayette was created in the Spring of 1999 [and originally called
the Health Informatics Center of Acadiana (HICA)] to complement the
health-related educational and research missions of the University
and to connect traditional public health agencies and Louisiana's vital
healthcare industry. "Health Informatics" is the applied science that
uses computer and communications technologies to gather and analyze
health data, and to disseminate health information to clinical and
administrative decision makers. The Center serves students, faculty,
healthcare providers, and the public at large, while positioning UL
Lafayette at the forefront of an extremely critical field.
The mission of the Louisiana Center for Health Informatics at UL
Lafayette is four-fold. |
- To augment the education of health professionals and
healthcare administrators at the undergraduate, graduate, and
continuing education levels;
- To provide an avenue for scholarly research into
community health needs and into the effectiveness of the healthcare
community's response to those needs;
- To serve the goals of Lafayette and Acadiana in
access to healthcare and in improving public health generally,
especially within Region IV of the Office of Public Health, and to
serve as a vital resource to "healthy communities" initiatives
throughout the State of Louisiana; and
- To fulfill community-information requirements of
healthcare providers in Region IV, and to aid policymakers and
statewide professional and trade associations in matters relating to
healthcare delivery and financing.
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Louisiana has not ranked better than 46th among states
since ReliaStar began publication of its State Health Rankings index in
1990. To achieve measurable improvements, architects of public policy
and private healthcare providers alike need better access to accurate
and timely population-based information. UL Lafayette has created LCHI
as a vehicle for leveraging the collective intellectual capital of its
faculty, students, and private-sector partners. The Louisiana Turning
Point Project, funded jointly by the Robert Wood Johnson and W. K.
Kellogg foundations, published a deliverable entitled "Louisiana's
Health Improvement Plan" at the end of 1999. This publication
prioritized the enhancement of the capacity and competence of the
broadly defined "public health system" in the areas of health
assessment through improvements in information and communication. LCHI
serves as a laboratory for reengineering the collection, analysis, and
dissemination of health status information in Louisiana. In this task,
LCHI capitalizes on its strong relationship with "healthy communities"
programs in the area, especially the Partnership for a Healthier
Lafayette. The Lafayette Community Health Consortium, the Acadiana
Medical Research Foundation, the Southwest Louisiana Area Health
Education Center, and the Office of Public Health in the Louisiana
Department of Health and Hospitals are all on record in support of UL
Lafayette's role. LCHI will continue to develop and utilize
academic-community-industry partnerships to obtain, aggregate, analyze,
and report on data and methodologies to benefit the health status of
Louisiana communities and thereby to enhance the health status of the
entire State.
The Louisiana Center for Health Informatics at UL Lafayette serves as a
focal point
for interdisciplinary curricular, research, and grant-seeking
activities benefiting
students and faculty in several colleges at the University, especially
the colleges
of Business
Administration, Sciences,
and Nursing.
Academic programs
in Health
Information Management,
Health Care Administration, Insurance & Risk Management, Nursing, Emergency
Health Science, Communicative
Disorders, Dietetics, and Health Education are the principal
collaborators
with Programs in Statistics,
Computer
Science, and Telecommunications
also
participating in health-related applications. Even during its planning
stages, LCHI was instrumental in attracting private endowments for two
$1,000,000 Chairs
-- tangible evidence of community willingness to partner with UL
Lafayette in
this field. The Louisiana Health System-funded J. Robert Rivet MD Chair
in Health
Informatics and the Acadian Ambulance Chair in Telehealth will speed
the creation
of an interdisciplinary Master of Science degree program in Health
Informatics
at UL Lafayette. |
