Health Informatics (*)
The field of health informatics is relatively new, hence there is no clear consensus regarding accepted terminology. As a result, the terms medical informatics, healthcare informatics, and health informatics are often used interchangeably. Medical informatics has been defined as "the scientific field that deals with biomedical information, data, and knowledge - their storage, retrieval, and optimal use for problem-solving and decision-making." (Shortliffe & Blois, 2001). At Bracken Library we use the term Health Informatics as it is inclusive of a variety of disciplines including Nursing, Medicine, and Rehabilitation Therapy. Health informatics is an interdisciplinary field which lies at the intersection of advanced computational applications and health information. This broad scope encompasses the areas of computer literacy, communications, information literacy, education, management systems, and decision support. Examples of health informatics applications include electronic patient records, patient monitoring systems, telemedicine, digital imaging systems, and information retrieval systems.
Reference
Shortliffe, E. H., & Blois, M. S. (2001). The computer meets medicine and biology: Emergence of a discipline. In E. H. Shortliffe, & L. E. Perreault (Eds.), Medical informatics: Computer applications in health care and biomedicine (Second ed.) (pp. 3-40). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Last Updated: 03 April 2009
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