Healthcare Informatics

Healthcare Informatics Theresa Christian

By Stephan P. Kudyba

Health or medical informatics is a discipline that includes all aspects of healthcare information science, from fundamental research to clinical applications. Medical informatics encompasses all means of understanding and promoting the effect of organization, analysis, management and use of information and healthcare. Although the medical informatics field shares the general scope of these interest with some other healthcare specialties and disciplines, medical informatics has developed its own area of emphasis and approaches that have set it apart. People who work in medical informatics are highly educated and how both information signs and healthcare the understand how to acquire, store, protect, retrieve and use a wide range of information about health and medicine. They understand the ins and outs of computerized and non-computerized information systems and also are familiar with clinical guidelines, workflows, and medical terminology. This is a growing field but at present the primary areas of specialization include: clinical informatics, clinical research informatics (including data mining, knowledge, representation and discovery, natural language processing) consumer health informatics, dental informatics, mental health informatics, nursing informatics, pharmacy informatics, primary care informatics, public health/population informatics, telemedicine and mobile computing informatics, translational bio informatics, and veterinary informatics. Informaticians work in various occupational settings, including hospitals, health systems, clinics, ambulatory and extended-care facilities, academic institutions, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, vendor and consulting firms and private practice.

Data provides the building blocks information, a vital resource to administrators, practitioners and decision-makers and...