Medical Informatics

Learn more about the various facets of medical informatics..

Below you can find further information on this medical area. All this information is freely available for re-distribution both privately and commercially, according to the GNU free documentation license.

Medical Informatics is the intersection of information science, medicine and health care. It deals with the resources, devices and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information in health and biomedicine. Health informatics tools include not only computers but also clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, and information and communication systems.

Subdomains of (bio)medical or health informatics include: clinical informatics, nursing informatics, imaging informatics, consumer health informatics, public health informatics, dental informatics, clinical research informatics, and bioinformatics, and pharmacy informatics.

Aspects of the field

A health information system's automatic immunization data entry in the patient's admission module.architectures for electronic medical records and other health information systems used for billing, scheduling or research
decision support systems in healthcare
messaging standards for the exchange of information between health care information systems (e.g., through the use of the HL7 data exchange standard) - these specifically define the means to exchange data, not the content
controlled medical vocabularies such as the Standardized Nomenclature of Medicine, Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT), Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC) or OpenGALEN Common Reference Model - used to allow a standard, accurate exchange of data content between systems and providers
use of hand-held or portable devices to assist providers with data entry/retrieval or medical decision-making

Development
Medical informatics began to take off in the US in the 1950s with the rise of the microchip and computers.

Early names for medical informatics included medical computing, medical computer science, computer medicine, medical electronic data processing, medical automatic data processing, medical information processing, medical information science, medical software engineering and medical computer technology.

Since the 1980's the coordinating body has been the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA)

Medical informatics in North America
The earliest use of computation for medicine was for dental projects in the 1950's at the United States National Bureau of Standards by Robert Ledley.

The next step in the mid 1950s were the development of expert systems such as MYCIN and INTERNEST-I. In 1965, the National Library of Medicine started to use MEDLINE and MEDLARS. At this time, Neil Pappalardo, Curtis Marble, and Robert Greenes developed MUMPS (Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System) in Octo Barnett's Laboratory of Computer Science at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. In the 1970s and 1980s it was the most commonly used programming language for clinical applications. The MUMPS operating system was used to support MUMPS language specifications. As of 2004, a descendent of this system is being used in the United States Veterans Affairs hospital system.

In the United States in 1996, HIPAA regulations concerning privacy and medical record transmission created the impetus for large numbers of physicians to move towards using EMR software, primarily for the purpose of secure medical billing.

In the US, progress towards a standardized health information infrastructure is underway. In 2004, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) formed the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT), headed by David J. Brailer, M.D., Ph.D. The mission of this office is to achieve widespread adoption of interoperable electronic health records (EHRs) in the US within 10 years. For more information regarding federal initiatives in this area, see QIOs.

European health informatics
In the United Kingdom, moves towards registration and regulation of those involved in Health Informatics have begun with the formation of the UK Council for Health Informatics Professions (UKCHIP)

The UK has also contracted out to several vendors for a National Medical Informatics system that divides the country into six regions and is united by a central electronic medical record system nicknamed "the spine". National Programme for IT in the NHS

Australian health informatics
Although there are a number of informatics organisations in Australia, The Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA) is regarded as the major umbrella group and is a member of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). Nursing informaticians were the driving force behind the formation of HISA, which is now an incorporated company. The membership comes from across the informatics spectrum that is from students to corporate affiliates. HISA has a number of branches (Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia) as well as special interest groups such as nursing (NIA), pathology, aged and community care, industry and medical imaging (Conrick, 2006)

A

• Analyze

• Arden Syntax

B

• Biomedical Informatics

C

• C-tools 2.0

• Clinical Terminology Server

• Clinical decision support system

• Clinical Informatics

• Continuity of care record

D

• Disease Management

E

• eMedicine

• Electronic Health Record

• Electronic Medical Record

• Empire Software

• Evidence-based Medicine

G

• GALEN common reference model

• General data format for Biomedical Signals

• Guideline (Medical)

• Guideline interchange format

• Guideline execution engine

H

• Health level 7

• Healthcare information and management systems society

• Healthcare workflow

I

• Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise

• International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems

M

• Medical algorithm

• Medical record

• Mycin

N

• New Freedom Commission on Mental Health

O

• Oscarmcmaster

P

• Pay for Performance

• Practice Management

T

• Teenscreen

• Texas Medication algorithm Project

W

• Wellnet

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