Medical Informatics

Medical informatics is the scientific field that deals with the storage, retrieval, sharing, and optimal use of biomedical information, data, and knowledge for problem solving and decision making. It touches on all basic and applied fields in biomedical science and is closely tied to modern information technologies, notably in the areas of computing and communication.

— Columbia

Medical Informatics (MI) is the study of information processing as it is used in healthcare. It might have been called medical computing, but the French-derived term informatique is more commonly used internationally and probably conveys a broader set of concerns, including the uses and flows of information that may have little to do with computers. Like many engineering fields, MI has scientific aspects that focus on the description, modeling and interpretation of how information is actually generated, disseminated and used, and underlying constraints or natural laws that govern these activities. MI is also deeply concerned with design of appropriate medical information processing systems, with tradeoffs in their implementation, and with ways to evaluate their effectiveness.

Some have suggested health informatics as a better, broader term, meant to encompass aspects of health care that are not traditionally the focus of medicine, such as preventive care, nutrition, patient education, epidemiology, etc. Related terms include bioinformatics, which is the study of information processing in biological sciences. Opinion currently varies on whether bioinformatics is part of medical informatics, or-if it forms a distinct discipline—how it relates. Most expect that progress in understanding the molecular basis of disease will bring these fields closer together, if not to merger. Telemedicine (or the recent European coinage telematique) focuses on one aspect of MI, access to and use of medical information at a distance.

At MIT, in line with our traditions of institutional flexibility, we have no official organization that does medical informatics, but a number of small foci around the research and teaching interests of faculty in different Departments and Laboratories.

—MIT

The graduate program in Health Informatics trains students in the application of computer and information sciences to the quantitative aspects and decision needs of the health and life sciences. Health Informatics encompasses not only mathematics, statistics and computing, but also includes other engineering, management, and information sciences applied to problems arising in biology, medicine and the delivery of health care.

—University of Minnesota

The emerging field of Medical Informatics requires a new generation of leaders dedicated to improving healthcare outcomes through the application of information technologies.

—Northwestern University

Medical information science (MIS) encompasses data, information, and knowledge acquisition, representation, modeling, integration, communication, and interpretation ranging across basic science and engineering through clinical practice and policy. The primary mission of the MIS Program is to train biomedical informatics researchers for academia and industry. The Program's focus is on the science of biomedical informatics, with special emphasis on rigorous methodology, innovation, and generalizability of findings, rather than the routine application of technology to biomedical science and practice. Training spans the full spectrum of biomedical informatics - from bench to bedside to health system and from bioinformatics to radiologic imaging to decision science. Graduates of the Program will be well positioned to contribute at the interface of bio- and medical informatics, where future research opportunities are excellent.

—University of California, SF

Biomedical Informatics is an emerging discipline that has been defined as the study, invention, and implementation of structures and algorithms to improve communication, understanding and management of medical information. The end objective of biomedical informatics is the coalescing of data, knowledge, and the tools necessary to apply that data and knowledge in the decision-making process, at the time and place that a decision needs to be made. The focus on the structures and algorithms necessary to manipulate the information separates Biomedical Informatics from other medical disciplines where information content is the focus.

— Vanderbilt

[Medical Informatics is] the field of information science concerned with the analysis and dissemination of medical data through the application of computers to various aspects of health care and medicine. —Medical Subject Heading (MeSH)

— National Library of Medicine

The terms 'medical informatics' and 'health informatics' have been variously defined, but can be best understood as meaning the understanding, skills and tools that enable the sharing and use of information to deliver healthcare and promote health. 'Health informatics' is now tending to replace the previously commoner term 'medical informatics', reflecting a widespread concern to define an information agenda for health services which recognizes the role of citizens as agents in their own care, as well as the major information-handling roles of the non-medical healthcare professions....

— British Medical Informatics Society

Upcoming Events

ISBMDA 2006 - 7th International Symposium on Biological and Medical Data Analysis December 7-8, 2006 in Thessaloniki, Greece

ICICT 2006 - 4th International Conference on Information & Communications Technology December 10-12, 2006 in Cairo, Egypt

Medicine Meets Virtual Reality 15 February 6-9, 2007 in Long Beach, California, United States

Brain-IT 2007 - Effective Monitoring Guided Management of Traumatic Brain Injury March 8-10, 2007 in Milan, Italy

AIME 2007 - 11th Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine July 7-11, 2007 in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Medinfo 2007 August 20-24, 2007 Brisbane, Australia