Kathryn Dansky, associate professor in health policy and administration, will discuss current developments and future directions in eHealth Wednesday as part of a medical informatics initiative by the School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST).
Her talk, “eHealth Research: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” is the first sponsored by the Raymond and Diana Tronzo Endowment for Medical Informatics in IST.
It also is first step in the school’s vision of developing research programs and expertise in medical informatics.
Danksy’s research focuses primarily on improving healthcare organizations’ delivery of services through technology. Funded by the National Institutes of Health and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, her research projects have included a feasibility study on using computerized medical records in rural hospitals and an evaluation of telehealth effectiveness in the delivery of home health services.
An emerging and multidisciplinary field, medical informatics involves the development of methods and systems for the acquisition, communication and use of medical information.
IST researchers’ interests lie in studying the impact of computational innovations on everything from organizational decisions underlying health insurance, patient confidentiality issues and the design of novel machinery. Future plans include collaborations with the departments of Health Policy and Administration, Biobehavioral Health and Kinesiology as well as with researchers in the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.
Dansky’s talk is scheduled for 3 p.m. in the Cybertorium.
