Leveraging AI to Transform Public Health Workflows with Metopio
Top 10 questions with Jonathan Giuffrida and Sophia Hamilton
During a recent webinar co-hosted by Metopio and NACCHO, public health experts explored how Metopio’s AI-driven platform is revolutionizing Community Health Assessments (CHAs) and Community Health Improvement Plans (CHIPs).
Check out the Top 10 questions on “How AI is Transforming Public Health Workflows”, featuring insights from Metopio’s co-founder and CTO, Jonathan Giuffrida, and Sophia Hamilton of the Kane County Health Department.
1 | What is the primary goal of Metopio’s AI tools in public health?
Jonathan: The main goal of our AI tools is to simplify the CHA and CHIP processes, allowing public health professionals to focus on identifying community challenges and improving health outcomes. By automating the more tedious aspects of data analysis—such as creating charts, maps, and captions—we help reduce the time it takes to complete assessments by over to 80%. Our platform ensures that health departments can spend more time addressing the root causes of health issues and less time on repetitive tasks.
2 | How does Metopio’s platform enhance CHAs?
Jonathan: Since we designed the platform to be intuitive and user-friendly, with point-and-click visualizations and preloaded datasets, public health professionals can shift their effort to the community. This allows health departments to accelerate the secondary data analysis and incorporate findings into the primary data collection they do with the community.
3 | How did Kane County leverage Metopio for their CHA??
Sophia: At Kane County, we partnered with Metopio to conduct our CHA in collaboration with local hospitals and mental health organizations. The platform’s AI tools helped us streamline data analysis and focus on key areas such as housing, food insecurity, and behavioral health. The flexibility of the platform allowed us to use our staff’s time more efficiently, which made a significant difference in how we approached public health planning and provided our partners with the customized analysis they needed.
4 | How does Metopio support health equity in public health assessments?
Jonathan: Health equity is at the core of what we do. Our platform disaggregates data by race, ethnicity, age, and other demographics, which allows health departments to identify disparities in health outcomes. By making these insights readily available, public health professionals can focus on developing programs that target the most vulnerable populations in their communities.
5 | What is the Kane Health Atlas, and how is it used?
Sophia: The Kane Health Atlas is an interactive public dashboard developed with Metopio’s platform. It provides our community with access to critical health data, such as maps, charts, and tables, all of which can be customized. This tool is widely used by community organizations, researchers, and universities for grant writing, program development, and public engagement. The Health Atlas has become an essential resource for improving collaboration and advocating for local health initiatives.
6 | How does the platform handle qualitative data, like community feedback?
Jonathan: AI can significantly streamline the qualitative analysis process. When users upload transcripts from focus groups or interviews, AI helps pull out key themes, quotes, and sentiment analysis, organizing everything by pre-identified community health needs. This automates the manual work of reviewing and categorizing qualitative data, allowing users to quickly compare insights from different groups and dig deeper into health challenges.
7 | How does Metopio’s AI chatbot, Juno, enhance access to public health data?
Jonathan: Juno is an AI-powered chatbot designed to make data even more accessible. Users can ask questions in plain language, and Juno responds by providing relevant data insights from the Health Atlas. This feature is particularly helpful for users who might not have technical expertise in navigating complex data sets and need answers quickly.
8 | How does AI help with the Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) process?
Jonathan: Once the CHA is complete, health departments move into the CHIP phase, where they develop programs to address community needs. Our platform uses AI to recommend evidence-based programs from validated sources like the CDC and NACCHO’s Strategy Bank. AI helps generate full logic models for these programs, complete with inputs, activities, outcomes, and measurement suggestions. This saves time and allows departments to focus on implementation and partner collaboration.
9 | How do Metopio’s tools increase collaboration between health departments and their partners?
Sophia: Metopio’s platform includes shared workspaces where health departments and their partners can collaborate on CHAs and CHIPs. For example, we were able to use the platform to engage hospital partners, community organizations, and mental health boards. By having a central hub for data and analysis, it made it easier to work together and share insights, which ultimately led to more effective health planning.
10 | What’s next for Metopio and its AI capabilities in public health?
Jonathan: The best part of my job is hearing from health departments about the tools they need to achieve better health outcomes. We’re continuously improving our AI tools and, like the CHIP, delivering on those ideas as quickly as possible. Ultimately, we want to empower public health professionals to focus on what they do best—improving health outcomes—by taking care of the complex, time-consuming data work.