Medical informatics in population health: building Wisconsin's strategic framework for health information technology.

Medicine is increasingly practiced through the application of information sciences. Medical informatics deals with optimal information use within bioinformatics, imaging, clinical, and population health domains. Population health informatics plays an important role in that it critically informs practice in each of the other domains. Proper functioning of health care systems requires an advanced health information network that supports clinical care, personal health management, population health, and research. But this infrastructure does not yet exist in the United States. A number of federal initiatives are underway to address this problem, including the development of a framework for a national health information network and funding for implementation. This network will be facilitated by federal leadership, but public and private partnerships, and state, regional, and local implementation and policy development will play a critical role. In this article, we describe several Wisconsin initiatives that are keys to developing a strategic framework and building the state's electronic health information infrastructure.