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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. This later-generation term reflects the substantive contribution of the citizen and of non-medical professions to the generation and usage of healthcare data.


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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