A History Of Medical Informatics

This is a meticulously detailed chronological record of significant events in the history of medical informatics and their impact on direct patient care and clinical research, offering a representative sampling of published contributions to the field. The History of Medical Informatics in the United States has been restructured within this new edition, reflecting the transformation medical informatics has undergone in the years since 1990. The systems that were once exclusively institutionally driven – hospital, multihospital, and outpatient information systems – are today joined by systems that are driven by clinical subspecialties, nursing, pathology, clinical laboratory, pharmacy, imaging, and more. At the core is the person – not the clinician, not the institution – whose health all these systems are designed to serve. A group of world-renowned authors have joined forces with Dr Marion Ball to bring Dr Collen’s incredible work to press. These recognized leaders in medical informatics, many of whom are recipients of the Morris F. Collen Award in Medical Informatics and were friends of or mentored by Dr Collen, carefully reviewed, editing and updating his draft chapters. This has resulted in the most thorough history of the subject imaginable, and also provides readers with a roadmap for the subject well into later in the century.

This textbook begins with an introduction to the US healthcare delivery system, its many systemic challenges and the prior efforts to develop and deploy informatics tools to help overcome those problems. It goes on to discuss health informatics from an historical perspective, its current state and its likely future state now that electronic health record systems are widely deployed, the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability standard is being rapidly accepted as the means to access the data stored in those systems and analytics is increasing being used to gain new knowledge from that aggregated clinical data. It then turns to some of the important and evolving areas of informatics including population and public health, mHealth and big data and analytics. Use cases and case studies are used in all of these discussions to help readers connect the technologies to real world challenges. Effective use of informatics systems and tools by providers and their patients is key to improving the quality, safety and cost of healthcare. With health records now digital, no effective means has existed for sharing them with patients, among the multiple providers who may care for them and for important secondary uses such as public/population health and research. This problem is a topic of congressional discussion and is addressed by the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016 that mandates that electronic health record (EHR) systems offer a patient-facing API. HL7’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is that API and this is the first comprehensive treatment of the technology and the many ways it is already being used. FHIR is based on web technologies and is thus a far more facile, easy to implement approach that is rapidly gaining acceptance. It is also the basis for a ‘universal health app platform’ that literally has the potential to foster innovation around the data in patient records similar to the app ecosystems smartphones created around the data they store. FHIR app stores have already been opened by Epic and Cerner, the two largest enterprise EHR vendors. Provider facing apps are already being explored to improve EHR usability and support personalized medicine. Medicare and the Veteran’s Administration have announced FHIR app platforms for their patients. Apple’s new IOS 11.3 features the ability for consumers to aggregate their health records on their iPhone using FHIR. Health insurance companies are exploring applications of FHIR to improve service and communication with their providers and patients. SureScripts, the national e-Prescribing network, is using FHIR to help doctors know if their patients are complying with prescriptions. This textbook is for introductory health informatics courses for computer science and health sciences students (e.g. doctors, nurses, PhDs), the current health informatics community, IT professionals interested in learning about the field and practicing healthcare providers. Though this textbook covers an important new technology, it is accessible to non-technical readers including healthcare providers, their patients or anyone interested in the use of healthcare data for improved care, public/population health or research.

This revised edition covers all aspects of public health informatics and discusses the creation and management of an information technology infrastructure that is essential in linking state and local organizations in their efforts to gather data for the surveillance and prevention. Public health officials will have to understand basic principles of information resource management in order to make the appropriate technology choices that will guide the future of their organizations. Public health continues to be at the forefront of modern medicine, given the importance of implementing a population-based health approach and to addressing chronic health conditions. This book provides informatics principles and examples of practice in a public health context. In doing so, it clarifies the ways in which newer information technologies will improve individual and community health status. This book's primary purpose is to consolidate key information and promote a strategic approach to information systems and development, making it a resource for use by faculty and students of public health, as well as the practicing public health professional. Chapter highlights include: The Governmental and Legislative Context of Informatics; Assessing the Value of Information Systems; Ethics, Information Technology, and Public Health; and Privacy, Confidentiality, and Security. Review questions are featured at the end of every chapter. Aside from its use for public health professionals, the book will be used by schools of public health, clinical and public health nurses and students, schools of social work, allied health, and environmental sciences.

Health Informatics (HI) focuses on the application of Information Technology (IT) to the field of medicine to improve individual and population healthcare delivery, education and research. This extensively updated fifth edition reflects the current knowledge in Health Informatics and provides learning objectives, key points, case studies and references.

Despite pressure from the private sector to market their own custom solutions, the healthcare industry is coming around to the idea of applying the strategies of collaboration, open solutions, and innovation to meet the ever-changing demands for healthcare information to support quality and safety. This book provides a roadmap for improving quality of care using Electronic Health Records (EHR) and interoperable, consumer-centric health information solutions. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images or content found in the physical edition.