Public health

Promoting better health and protecting populations from outbreaks

Public health is the science of promoting and protecting the health of populations through education, research and surveillance of trends and indicators. These populations can range from handfuls of individuals to entire nations of citizens. Public health disciplines are as diverse as epidemiology, biostatistics, immunization and education, and also include environmental, community, behavioral and occupational health and other fields.

CGI has comprehensive experience in delivering public health solutions to geographic regions. Our vision is to harness the power of technology to support public health professionals in their efforts to protect the citizenry and raise the overall health of populations.

We work closely with health organizations to meet their needs and, by extension, the health concerns of the public. Examples include:

  • Integrated Public Health Information System (iPHIS) – Health Canada’s iPHIS is an automated, integrated client health record and reporting system used to chart individual health information, including immunizations, disease cases, lab test results and other health services. CGI enhanced and implemented a web version of the system which is in use across Canada and in the Bahamas. The system provides anywhere access to client records by multiple public health providers and systems.
  • Public health surveillance – Examples include the following:
    • CGI supports the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Division of Informatics Solutions and Operations systems, which play a critical role in reporting on U.S. health and disease trends and alert national networks that protect the country in times of public health emergencies and outbreaks
    • British Columbia’s implementation of Panorama, a Pan-Canadian public health surveillance system, is supported by CGI, which maintains multiple environments and middleware component of this complex solution
    • CGI was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) to lead a multinational consortium in a study on eHealth delivery, enabled by satellite, in Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Rural physician compensation system – CGI created, implemented and maintains the Rural, Remote, Northern Program (RRNP) which defines and addresses the relative degree of medical isolation for physicians in rural, remote and northern Alberta communities. The system manages compensation of physicians who practice in under-serviced areas, maintaining physician records, determining program eligibility and interfacing with accounts payable systems to meet program goals.
  • Business intelligence – CGI provides business intelligence support within the public health space in Alberta. We provision data and metadata from multiple Alberta Health applications into the Alberta Health Business Intelligence Environment (BIE).