ISHIC 2016 Third Talk by Prof. Aziz Sheikh, Professor of Primary Care Research & Development and Co-Director, Centre of Medical Informatics, Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.

Exploiting the Potential of Digitized Data to Promote Population Health
Digitized standalone health and linked cross-sectoral data offer numerous opportunities for enhancing population health. In this talk, I will draw on examples of research undertaken over the past 15 years to better understand the epidemiology of diseases, evaluate the impact of public health interventions and increase the efficiency of clinical trials. I will then reflect on the current approaches being pursued to scale-up these efforts in order to facilitate the creation of ‘Learning Health Systems’. My talk will conclude with reflections gained from a recent week-long World Health Organization visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on how it might create capabilities to digitize its health systems and catalyse the exploitation of the resulting data assets for patient and public benefit.