MEDICAL INFORMATICS 1

1. Medical Informatics Basics

2. Basic Questions • Medical Informatics Definition • Medical Informatics as the

Scientific Area • Medical Informatics Areas • Aspects of the Medical Informatics
fields • Clinical informatics • Biomedical informatics • Bioinformatics • Public
health informatics • Nursing informatics • Dental informatics • Medical Cybernetics
• Information Systems examples

3. Medical Informatics (A) Medical information science is the science of using

system-analytic tools . . . to develop procedures (algorithms) for management,
process control, decision making and scientific analysis of medical knowledge.
(E.H. Shortliffe, The science of biomedical computing. Medical Informatics
1984;9:185-93.)

4. Medical Informatics (B) Medical Informatics comprises the theoretical and

practical aspects of information processing and communication, based on
knowledge and experience derived from processes in medicine and health care.
(J.H. van Bemmel, The structure of medical informatics. Medical Informatics
1984;9:175-80.)

5. Medical Informatics (C) In medical informatics we develop and assess methods

and systems for the acquisition, processing, and interpretation of patient data
with the help of knowledge that is obtained in scientific research. (J.H. van
Bemmel and M.A. Musen, Handbook of Medical Informatics, Springer Verlag,
1997.)

6. Medical Informatics (D) It is the intersection of information science, computer

science 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. (Wikipedia, 2008.)

7. The Informatics • Informatics (academic field), a broad academic field

encompassing human-computer interaction, information science, information
technology, algorithms, and social science • Computer science, the study of
complex systems, information and computation using applied mathematics,
electrical engineering and software engineering techniques. • Information science,
the study of the processing, management, and retrieval of information •
 Information technology, the study, design, development, implementation,
support, or management of computer-based information systems

8. Medical Informatics is Multidisciplinary • It is applies methodologies developed

in multiple areas of scientific endeavor to many different tasks • In turn, it often
gives rise to new, more general methodologies that enrich these scientific
disciplines

9. Medical Informatics is Multidisciplinary

10. 2. Example of Scientific Areas Relevant to Medical Informatics • Medicine/

Biology • Mathematics • Information Systems • Computer Science • Statistics •
Decision Analysis • Economics/Health Care Policy • Psychology
11. 2. Example of Scientific Areas Relevant to Medical Informatics

12. [Link] collection: -History -Physical examinations -Laboratory and other tests
Information Data [Link] making Patient Therapy plan [Link]
Diagnosis/assessment 2. The Diagnostic-Therapeutic Cycle, Simplified View
13. 2. Levels of Automated Support

14. 3. Examples of Medical Informatics Areas • Hospital information systems •

Electronic medical records & medical vocabularies • Laboratory information
systems • Pharmaceutical information systems • Radiological (imaging)
information systems • Patient monitoring systems • Clinical decision-support
systems • Diagnosis/interpretation • Therapy/management • Bioinformatics:
Closely related tasks/methods
15. 3. Examples of Medical Informatics Areas

16. 4. Aspects of the Medical Informatics fields • Architectures for electronic

medical records and other health information systems • Decision support systems
in healthcare, including clinical decision support systems • Standards (e.g. DICOM,
HL7) and integration profiles to facilitate the exchange of information between
healthcare information systems • Controlled medical vocabularies (CMVs) such as
the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine, Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT),used to
allow a standard, accurate exchange of data content between systems
17. 4. Aspects of the Medical Informatics fields

18. 5. Clinical informatics • It is a sub-field of medical informatics. • It is a

combination of information science, computer science, and clinical science
designed to assist in the management and processing of data, information and
knowledge to support the practice and delivery of clinical care. (Shortliffe and
Perreault, Medical Informatics: Computing applications in health care and
biomedicine)

19. 6. Biomedical informatics It is concerned with the study and application of

information technology and computer science as well as decision making, human
problem solving, cognitive science, standards, policies, and human factors in the
practice of biomedical science, medicine and healthcare and is most commonly
used in this way in the USA.
20. 7. Bioinformatics Bioinformatics and computational biology involve the use of
techniques including applied mathematics, informatics, statistics, computer
science, artificial intelligence, chemistry, and biochemistry to solve biological
problems usually on the molecular level.

21. 8. Public Health Informatics Public Health Informatics has beendefined as the
systematic application of information and computer science and technology to
public health practice, research, and learning. Major tasks: • Collection of public
health data. • Storage of public health data. • Analysis of public health data.

22. 9. Nursing informatics (A) It is a specialty of Health care informatics which deals
with the support of nursing by information systems in delivery, documentation,
administration and evaluation of patient care and prevention of diseases.
(Wikipedia, 2008)

23. 9. Nursing informatics (B) It is a specialty that integrates nursing science,

computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data,
information, and knowledge in nursing practice. (American Nurses Association's
Scope and Standards for Nursing Informatics Practice, 2006)

24. 10. Dental informatics Dental informatics is the application of computer and
information science to improve dental practice, research, education and
management. It can be considered a subset of medical informatics and
biomedical informatics. It improves patient care by improving efficiency and
effectiveness in different areas of a common dental practice: • administration; •
clinical care; • charting records; • patient education.

25. 11. Medical Cybernetics Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure
of complex systems, especially communication processes, control mechanisms
and feedback principles. Cybernetics is closely related to control theory and
systems theory. Concepts studied by cyberneticists include, but are not limited to:
learning, cognition, adaption, social control, emergence, communication,
efficiency, efficacy and interconnectivity. These concepts are studied by other
subjects such as engineering and biology, but in cybernetics these are removed
from the context of the individual organism or device.

26. 11. Medical Cybernetics Pure cybernetics studies systems of control as a

concept, attempting to discover the basic principles underlying such things as: •
Artificial intelligence • Robotics • Computer Vision • Control systems • Emergence •
Learning organization Computer sciencedirectly applies the concepts of
cybernetics to the control of devices and the analysis of information. • Decision
support system • Cellular automaton • Simulation
27. 11. Medical Cybernetics Cybernetics in biology is the study of cybernetic systems
present in biological organisms, primarily focusing on how animals adapt to their
environment, and how information in the form of genes is passed from
generation to generation: • Bioengineering • Biocybernetics • Bionics •
Homeostasis • Medical cybernetics • Synthetic Biology

28. 11. Medical Cybernetics Medical Cyberneticsis a field of applied cybernetics

which utilizes the concepts of cybernetics to medical research and practice. It
covers an emerging working program for the application of systems- and
communications-theory, connectionism and decision theory on biomedical
research and health related [Link]: • Systems Theoryin medical
sciences(searching for and modelling of physiological dynamics). • Medical
information and Communication Theory (mathematically describe signalling
processes and information storage in different physiological layers) •
Connectionism(describe information processing in neural networks) • Medical
Decision Theory (gather evidence based foundations for decision making in the
clinical setting)
29. 12. Information systems – example Electronic health record (EHR) with image
and document links.

30. 12. Information systems – example Sample patient record view from an image-
based electronic health record (VistA).
31. 12. Information systems – example
32. 12. Information systems – example A PACS allows to store volumic exams and
to reconstruct 3D images
33. Conclusion • Medical Informatics Definition • Medical Informatics as the Scientific
Area • Medical Informatics Areas • Aspects of the Medical Informatics fields •
Clinical informatics • Biomedical informatics • Bioinformatics • Public health
informatics • Nursing informatics • Dental informatics • Medical Cybernetics •
Information Systems examples