Improving Public Health Informatics - Case Study

Introduction

The primary objective of the proposed project is to improve public health informatics system. This will be achieved through the development of an integrated database to ensure efficacy in reporting infectious diseases and future outbreaks. The project will promote fast intervention, advance community health and curb the spread of diseases. Based on the experience of the project team gained from the implementation of the EMR systems, the probability of success for this project is high.

Report on the current communication Plan

The communication strategy of a project must be effective and efficient to guarantee success.  Notably, communication fills the gap between the project team and stakeholders. It further ensures the timely achievement of the project goals, strategies, and actions [3]. A major failure of many projects is the lack of proper communication or the absence of an appropriate communication plan that meets the project needs. This creates a room for rumours and erroneous interpretations leading to project failure [6]. Any project has multiple stakeholders who are important in determining its success and efficiency in addressing the project need. The current project acknowledges the presence of the stakeholders and implements a communication plan to pass information. However, the communication plan does not contain essential elements to make it efficient in influencing the decision-making process.

The major shortcoming of the communication plan is the failure to provide a strategy for stakeholder identification and analysis. Arguably, the project identifies the essential stakeholders but fails to describe each category of stakeholders and analyze the impact of the project goals and objectives to each group. Conducting a stakeholder identification and analysis facilitates the identification of the stakeholders with an interest in the project and analyze their impact on the project and vice versa [4]. While unions, News Media, and government agencies are identified as critical stakeholders, there is no analysis on their influence, which could be a risk during the project implementation phase. It is necessary to carry out an interest-based analysis and mapping describing each stakeholder’s influence on the project and identifying the appropriate communication method such as newsletters, websites and targeted public meetings among others [5]. A similar analysis for each group will give the project manager a better understanding of the project stakeholders such as their number, interests, impact on and by the project and the ideal communication channel to engage them.