Diedre Brown, Dawn Claggett, Emmanuel Lea, Peggy Sasso, and Lucretia William
HCS/535
May 25, 2015
Jamila Jones, Instructor
The health care industry is committed to supporting its communities. The industry continues to seek avenue to keep professionals and the public informed. The use of citizen-generated data is proving to be an increasing avenue to increase this awareness. The purpose of this paper is to provide a Team discussion about citizen-generated data and its advantages and disadvantages.
The term citizen-generated data refers to the term as the voluntary participation of members of the public in scientific research, including but not limited to data collection and analysis, and problem solving. Situational awareness is the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical elements of information about what is happening to and going on around those with regards to the mission (Smith, 2015). One advantage of emergency health agencies using citizen-generated data for situational awareness would be to get information spread quickly. Almost everyone in the US has access to the internet in some form. Social forums, like Facebook and Twitter, are examples of avenues that citizens can use to get information spread quickly. But, one of the disadvantages to that is whether or not people can believe the information in which they are receiving through these avenues. The Team also believes another advantage of citizen-generated data seems to be lower labor and administrative cost. By using internet technology and volunteers, a lot of the labor and research cost are free. For example, conducting a survey, people can simply go online to fill out the survey instead having people to call or go door to door. In addition, this team believes obvious disadvantages are the difficulty maintaining personal privacy, particularly for projects dealing with people’s health. For example, with researches taking skin
References: Bring Your Own Data retrieved from http://www.phe.gov/about/oem/fusion/forum/Pages/byod.aspx Smith, B. (2015). Wilson Center. Retrieved from http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/AgencyLiability_final.pdf Team I made the correction to the reference I used…..Diedre