"The Emergency Department: Where the Public, the Press, and Policy Collide, and How Health Data Can Untangle the Mess" is a keynote lecture delivered by Dr Michael Schull, President and CEO and senior core scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Toronto. He delivered this lecture at an international conference held by The Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research at the University of St Andrews in Scotland in August 2015.