The Online Journal of Public Health Informatics invites submissions to a new theme issue titled “Opportunities and Challenges in the Applications of AI In Public Health Informatics.”
The application of artificial intelligence (AI) in public health informatics presents both significant challenges and opportunities. AI has the potential to revolutionize public health by enabling better data collection and analysis, enhancing disease surveillance, improving decision-making, and strengthening public health interventions. However, its implementation also faces technical, ethical, and operational challenges. To further leverage AI’s contribution to public health issues, it is crucial to address concerns regarding health equity, privacy and security, transparency and explainability, accountability and governance, data quality and interoperability, and bias in AI models.
The integration of AI applications into precision public health empowers health professionals to target interventions to specific communities based on social determinants of health. This transition from a broad, one-size-fits all approach to a community-based intervention leads to more efficient management of infectious diseases, reduction of health care costs, and improvements in overall population health outcomes. Human-AI collaboration at the community level is required for the successful integration of AI into precision public health.
This issue invites researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to submit thought-provoking works on topics including, but not limited to, the following key themes:
- Data privacy and security: concerns about confidentiality, consent, and regulatory compliance
- Transparency, accountability, and explainability
- Integration and interoperability of public health data siloed across different systems and formats
- Bias in AI models: training AI models on non-representative health data can result in inequitable outcomes
- Ethical considerations: ethical dilemmas in making decisions about resource allocation and prioritization of interventions
- Workforce: inadequate AI and data science expertise in the public health sector. Ethical considerations in the management of agentic AI healthcare and public health workforce
- Trust and acceptability: the scepticism of health professionals and the general public of AI-generated insights
- Data preparation for AI applications: adherence to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles for digital assets, enabling their transformation into AI-ready formats
- Disease detection and surveillance: real-time outbreak prediction and detection of emerging public health threats
- Predictive analytics for disease prevention: capability to identify health risk factors and assist in designing interventions proactively
- Enhance precision public health practice: incorporation of AI into precision public health enables community-based targeting of interventions
- Natural language processing for public health intervention: public sentiment and misinformation monitoring through analysis of social media and unstructured data
- Remote monitoring and telehealth: expansion of access to underserved populations using AI applications
Submissions:
We are interested in papers that provide insights, propose solutions, and foster a deeper understanding of the complexities of AI applications in public health informatics. We welcome reviews, original research papers, viewpoints, research letters, and commentaries that address the challenges and opportunities surrounding the use of AI in public health informatics.
How to Submit
To submit an article to the Online Journal of Public Health Informatics, please visit the submission page. Consult our Instructions for Authors for more information on how to submit a manuscript. Please submit to the Online Journal of Public Health Informatics by selecting “Opportunities and Challenges in the Application of Artificial Intelligence in Public Health Informatics” in the “Section” drop-down list.
Submission Guidelines
We will not accept articles that are solely written using generative AI or other AI tools. For more information, please see the JMIR Publications editorial policy.
All submissions will undergo a rigorous peer-review process, and accepted articles will be published as part of the “Opportunities and Challenges in the Application of AI in Public Health Informatics” theme issue. Standard APF applies.
Submission Deadline: open call for submissions
Submissions not reviewed or accepted for publication in this Online Journal of Public Health Informatics theme issue may be offered cascading peer review or transfer to other JMIR Publications journals, according to standard publisher policies. Early-stage formative work that informs the design of future interventions or research may better fit the scope of JMIR Formative Research. Authors are encouraged to submit study protocols or grant proposals to JMIR Research Protocols before data acquisition to preregister the study (Registered Reports; subsequent acceptance in one of the JMIR Publications journals is then guaranteed).
Please direct questions regarding this theme issue to the Online Journal of Public Health Informatics editorial team at ed-support@jmir.org.
All articles submitted to this theme issue will be shared and published rapidly through the following mechanisms:
- All peer-reviewed articles in this theme issue will be immediately and permanently made open access. This is the standard for all titles within the JMIR Publications portfolio.
- Articles can be made immediately available via JMIR Preprints (with a DOI) if authors select the preprint option at submission to enable this service.
Editors:
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
Associate Editor: Nsikak Akpakpan, Principal Researcher - Global Development Research Collaborative (GDRC), Chicago; Principal Director - Data and AI Innovation, n-Tier Technology Group, Chicago
Associate Editor: Kiran Kanakadandila, Director, Intelligent Automation Solutions, USA