Public health research is complex and multi-layered and includes data from a variety of sources such as disease registries, administrative data, electronic health care records, social media, mobile health apps, wearables as fitness trackers, Internet of Things (IoT), geography, and environment. Conventional analytic methods are not sufficient and limited in scope to analyze and disentangle the complexity inherent in public health research data.
The Public Health Research and Analytics Laboratory aims to be an integrated platform for analyses of large health data, geospatial information, and data obtained through sensor-based health monitoring systems.
Our purpose
The ultimate goal of this Lab is to develop a holistic picture of population health, which can then be used to improve the health of populations in Canada through targeted interventions and strategies and evidence-based policymaking. In Canada, through the research conducted in the Lab, we aim to provide public health agencies with evidence to enable targeted intervention and prevention strategies for public health issues, provide policymakers with an evidence base for their policies and develop novel methods to address public health issues through advanced epidemiological and geospatial analysis.
The overall goal of this is to help public health agencies, health researchers, and HQP across Canada to understand complex public health issues, apply the methods developed, and implement public health interventions and policies based on generated evidence.
