Online Journal of Public Health Informatics

A leading peer-reviewed, open access journal dedicated to the dissemination of high-quality research and innovation in the field of public health informatics.

Editor-in-Chief:

Edward K. Mensah PhD, MPhil, Associate Professor Emeritus of health economics and informatics, Health Policy and Administration Division, School of Public Health, University of Illinois Chicago (UIC)


The Online Journal of Public Health Informatics (OJPHI) aims to promote the application of informatics to improve public health research, education and policy. We welcome original research articles, reviews, and perspectives/viewpoints that cover a broad range of topics related to public health informatics.

OJPHI has been published since 2009, but from 2023 onwards it will be published by JMIR Publications. Volumes published prior to 2023 can be found here

The journal is archived in PubMed Central and indexed in PubMed.

Recent Articles

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Behavioral Surveillance for Public Health

COVID-19 risk perception is a factor that influences the pandemic spread. Understanding the potential behavioral responses to COVID-19, including preparedness and adoption of preventive measures, can inform interventions to curtail its spread.

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Public Health Data Analytics

Addressing the opioid epidemic requires timely insights into population-level factors, such as trends in prevalence of legal and illegal substances, overdoses, and deaths.

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Reviews

Considerable use of mobile health (mHealth) interventions has been seen, and these interventions have beneficial effects on health and health service delivery processes, especially in resource-limited settings. Various functionalities of mobile phones offer a range of opportunities for mHealth interventions.

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Viewpoints

Artificial intelligence (AI) applied to medicine offers immense promise, in addition to safety and regulatory concerns. Traditional AI produces a core algorithm result, typically without a measure of statistical confidence or an explanation of its biological-theoretical basis. Efforts are underway to develop explainable AI (XAI) algorithms that not only produce a result but also an explanation to support that result. Here we present a framework for classifying XAI algorithms applied to clinical medicine: An algorithm’s clinical scope is defined by whether the core algorithm output leads to observations (eg, tests, imaging, clinical evaluation), interventions (eg, procedures, medications), diagnoses, and prognostication. Explanations are classified by whether they provide empiric statistical information, association with a historical population or populations, or association with an established disease mechanism or mechanisms. XAI implementations can be classified based on whether algorithm training and validation took into account the actions of health care providers in response to the insights and explanations provided or whether training was performed using only the core algorithm output as the end point. Finally, communication modalities used to convey an XAI explanation can be used to classify algorithms and may affect clinical outcomes. This framework can be used when designing, evaluating, and comparing XAI algorithms applied to medicine.

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Editorial

Founded in 2009, the Online Journal of Public Health Informatics (OJPHI) strives to provide an unparalleled experience as the platform of choice to advance public and population health informatics. As a premier peer-reviewed journal in this field, OJPHI’s mission is to serve as an advocate for the discipline through the dissemination of public health informatics research results and best practices among practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and educators. However, in the current environment, running an independent open access journal has not been without challenges. Judging from the low geographic spread of our current stakeholders, the overreliance on a small volunteer management staff, the limited scope of topics published by the journal, and the long article turnaround time, it is obvious that OJPHI requires a change in direction in order to fully achieve its mission. Fortunately, our new publisher JMIR Publications is the leading brand in this field, with a portfolio of top peer-reviewed journals covering innovation, technology, digital medicine and health services research in the internet age. Under the leadership of JMIR Publications, OJPHI plans to expand its scope to include new topics such as precision public health informatics, the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in public health research and practice, and infodemiology in public health informatics.

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Preprints Open for Peer-Review

There are no preprints available for open peer-review at this time. Please check back later.

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