Public health issues are on the rise, especially in urban areas like Baltimore City. To address and solve Baltimore’s growing public health crisis, the Baltimore City Health Department (BCHD) is launching the Transforming Engineering for Civic Health (TECHealth) program.
For more than 200 years, BCHD has worked to combat public health issues, but they currently face many technological blockers. TECHealth allows local tech companies and organizations to propose and create innovative solutions to these contemporary health challenges.
Offering innovative tech solutions to the public.
TECHealth will allow the country’s oldest continuously operating health department to serve the public while offering innovative technological solutions to the City’s health problems.
This project strives to safeguard Baltimore citizens from public health issues while also allowing the city to invest in Baltimore-based companies on their path to reaching these health solutions.
Creating an automated Health Dashboard for Baltimore City.
Fearless is 1 of 7 companies in TECHealth’s inaugural cohort. And each of the 7 organizations will address a particular public health issue.
Fearless is tasked with creating an automated Health Dashboard for the City of Baltimore. This project will involve extracting and synthesizing large quantities of BCHD data to provide current snapshots of public health indicators in the city.
Dr. Letitia Dzirasa, Fearless’s Health Innovation Officer and the Team Captain for this project, said that “in urban populations, we generally see a higher prevalence of certain types of diseases related to what we call ‘the social determinants of health.’”
Fearless’ goal for the dashboard will be to “pull this data into one user-friendly place and create a map of the relevant health issues and concerns,” she said. “This will help us decide the smartest places for the city to concentrate its efforts.”
The dashboard will provide a sleek map for large amounts of BCHD information, but Dr. Dzirasa believes the result will be greater than just data visualization. It will also allow its users to see important public health trends like the correlation between certain demographic factors and well-being. And Fearless envisions an overall improvement in the city’s healthcare efficiency and patient outcomes by allowing BCHD to accurately track this data and more appropriately direct their funding.
All of the TECHealth teams will be in the planning, development, and prototyping phase for the next several months. But Dr. Dzirasa is already looking forward to project implementation and beyond.
“In addition to helping our city, if it goes well, this project has the potential to guide urban health planning throughout the nation,” she said. “If we do this well and effectively, this dashboard could be used to improve patient outcomes across the country.”
This announcement was published independently of the Baltimore City Health Department. This release does not constitute or imply an endorsement by the BCHD of the product, process, or service, or its producer or provider. The views and opinions expressed in any referenced document do not necessarily state or reflect those of the BCHD.