Health informatics

Health Informatics

Health informatics (pronunciation: /hɛlθ ɪnfərˈmætɪks/) is an interdisciplinary field that uses health information technology to improve health care via any combination of higher quality, higher efficiency (spurring lower cost and thus greater availability), and new opportunities. The disciplines involved include information science, computer science, social science, behavioral science, management science, and others.

Etymology

The term "health informatics" was first used in the 1960s and is a combination of the words "health" and "informatics". "Health" is derived from the Old English word "hǣlth", which has the base meaning of "whole", and "informatics" is derived from the French word "informatique", which is a combination of "information" and "automatic".

Related Terms

Electronic Health Record (EHR): An electronic version of a patient's medical history, that is maintained by the provider over time, and may include all of the key administrative clinical data relevant to that persons care under a particular provider.

Health Information Exchange (HIE): The mobilization of health care information electronically across organizations within a region, community or hospital system.

Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS): A health information technology system that is designed to provide physicians and other health professionals with clinical decision support (CDS), that is, assistance with clinical decision-making tasks.

Telemedicine: The use of telecommunication and information technology to provide clinical health care from a distance. It has been used to overcome distance barriers and to improve access to medical services that would often not be consistently available in distant rural communities.

Public Health Informatics: The application of informatics in areas of public health, including surveillance, prevention, preparedness, and health promotion.

Nursing Informatics: A specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice.

Pharmacy Informatics: The scientific field that focuses on medication-related data and knowledge within the continuum of healthcare systems - including its acquisition, storage, analysis, use and dissemination - in the delivery of optimal medication-related patient care and health outcomes.