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Health informatics

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Electronic patient chart of a HIS

Medical Informatics is the name given to the application of information technology to healthcare. It is the:

"understanding, skills and tools that enable the sharing and use of information to deliver healthcare and promote health" (British Medical Informatics Society).

Medical informatics is often called health informatics or biomedical informatics. These later-generation terms reflect the substantive contribution of the citizen & non-medical professions to the generation and usage of healthcare data and related information. Additionally, medical informaticians are active in bioinformatics and other fields not strictly defined as health care.


Aspects of the field

File:Immune auto.jpg
A HIS's automatic immunization data entry in the patient's admission module.

These include:

  • 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) or Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC) - 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

See also

External links

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