science

Healthcare Information For All

Healthcare Information For All is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Healthcare Information For All rather than just read about it. In short: Healthcare Information For All (HIFA) is a global campaign and community of practice of health professionals, publishers, librarians, technologists, researchers, policymakers, and patient representatives, working to improve the availability and use of reliable healthcare information worldwide. The rationale for HIFA is described in a Lancet paper, commissioned by the World Health Organization.

Key takeaways

Healthcare Information For All belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Healthcare Information For All to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Healthcare Information For All from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Healthcare Information For All (HIFA) is a global campaign and community of practice of health professionals, publishers, librarians, technologists, researchers, policymakers, and patient representatives, working to improve the availability and use of reliable healthcare information worldwide. The rationale for HIFA is described in a Lancet paper, commissioned by the World Health Organization. The paper notes that the lack of availability and use of reliable healthcare information in low- and middle-income countries is a major contributor to avoidable death and suffering, and recommends multistakeholder action to accelerate progress. HIFA was launched in October 2006 at the 10th Congress of the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa in Mombasa, Kenya (it was initially called HIFA 2015). It currently has more than 20,000 professional members from 2500 health and development organisations in 180 countries.

Vision and strategy The HIFA vision is: "A world where every person and every health worker will have access to the reliable healthcare information they need to protect their own health and the health of others, and will be protected from health misinformation". HIFA explores how to meet the information needs of citizens as well as health workers and health policymakers, recognising the importance of citizens, parents and children as providers of care, especially in low-resource settings where health workers may be absent or hard to reach. The HIFA Strategy (2022–24) describes seven strategic shifts to accelerate progress towards universal access to reliable healthcare information: convene stakeholders; strengthen collaboration with the World Health Organization; promote multilingualism; identify and address priority issues; harness collective intelligence; strengthen advocacy; and protect from misinformation.

Structure The network is administered by the Global Healthcare Information Network CIC, a nonprofit organisation based in the United Kingdom and a non-State actor in official relations with the World Health Organization. The HIFA community interacts on six online discussion forums: HIFA, CHIFA, HIFA-Portuguese, HIFA-French, HIFA-Spanish, and HIFA-Zambia (the total number of members is more than 20,000 for all forums):

HIFA (since 2006) is in English. CHIFA (since 2006) is also in English and focuses on child health and rights. CHIFA is administered jointly by Global Healthcare Information Network, International Child Health Group (Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health), and International Society for Social Paediatrics and Child Health. HIFA-Portuguese (since 2009), HIFA-French (2010-) and HIFA-Spanish (2018-) are collaborations between the World Health Organization and Global Healthcare Information Network. They explore how to improve the availability and use of reliable healthcare information in those languages, and serve also as dedicated global health networks for Portuguese, French and Spanish speakers. HIFA-Zambia was launched in 2011 in collaboration with the Zambia UK Health Workforce Alliance.

Recognition An external evaluation in 2011 concluded that "HIFA achieves an extraordinary level of activity on minimal resources from which many people around the world benefit". The British Medical Association and the World Medical Association adopted healthcare information for all as official policy in 2015 and 2019, respectively. By 2022, almost 500 health and development organisations worldwide had officially declared their commitment to healthcare information for all. In February 2022, Global Healthcare Information Network CIC (the NGO that houses the secretariat of HIFA) was admitted as a non-State actor in official relations with the World Health Organization.

Challenges HIFA's impact is limited by its very low human resource capacity (one professional staff plus volunteers). This in turn is related to lack of investment by funding agencies in the availability and use of reliable healthcare information. However, since 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated "infodemic" have underlined the fundamental importance of access to reliable healthcare information. "Never before has everyone been so aware of the need for reliable healthcare information, and yet so vulnerable to misinformation."

References

External links Official website

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Healthcare Information For All

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Healthcare Information For All claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Healthcare Information For All before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Healthcare Information For All ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Healthcare Information For All

In research: Healthcare Information For All appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Healthcare Information For All in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Healthcare Information For All is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Health campaigns, Medical and health organisations based in the United Kingdom, Organizations established in 2006, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Healthcare Information For All outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Healthcare Information For All in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Healthcare Information For All means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Healthcare Information For All out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Healthcare Information For All in simple terms?

Why does Healthcare Information For All matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Healthcare Information For All?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Healthcare Information For All.