Towards an intelligent decision support system for public health surveillance - a qualitative analysis of information needs.

Public health information systems are often implemented considering the functionalities and requirements established by administrative staff or researchers, but sometimes ignoring the particular needs of decision makers. This paper describes a proposal to support the design of a Decision Support System for Public Health Surveillance in Colombia, by conducting a qualitative study to identify the real needs of people involved in decision making processes. Based on the study results, an intelligent computational component that supports Data Analysis Automation, Prediction of future scenarios and the identification of new Behavioral Patterns is proposed. The component will be implemented using the Case Based Reasoning methodology, which will be integrated as a new component of the Open Source DHIS2 Platform, enabling public health decision-making.