Medinfo 2001

Vols. for 1963- include as pt. 2 of the Jan. issue: Medical subject headings.

Technological infrastructure - Standards for interworking - Human-computer interaction - Knowledge representation - Information management - Decision support - Electronic patient records - Health information systems - Patient care aspects/telematics.

A fundamental challenge for medical informatics is to develop and apply better ways of understanding how information technologies and methods can help support the best care for every patient every day given available medical knowledge and resources. In order to provide the most effective healthcare possible, the activities of teams of health professionals have to be coordinated through well-designed processes centered on the needs of patients. For information systems to be accepted and used in such an environment, they must balance standardization based on shared medical knowledge with the flexibility required for customization to the individual patient. Developing innovative approaches to design and build evidence-based careflow management systems is essential for providing the knowledge management infrastructure of health care organizations that seeks to increase performance in delivering high quality care services by efficiently exploiting available resources. Parallel challenges arise in the organization of research at the biological and clinical levels, where the focus on systematically organizing and supporting processes of scientific inquiry by novel informatics methods and databases are in their very early stages. These Proceedings of Medinfo 2004 demonstrate the base of knowledge medical informatics professionals will collectively draw upon in the years ahead to meet these challenges and realize opportunities.

Healthcare Information Management Systems, Third edition, will be a comprehensive volume addressing the technical, organizational, and management issues confronted by healthcare professionals in the selection, implementation, and management of healthcare information systems. With contributions from experts in the field, this book focuses on topics such as strategic planning, turning a plan into reality, implementation, patient-centered technologies, privacy, the new culture of patient safety, and the future of technologies in progress. With the addition of 28 new chapters, the Third Edition is also richly peppered with case studies of implementation, both in the United States and abroad. The case studies are evidence that information technology can be implemented efficiently to yield results, yet they do not overlook pitfalls, hurdles, and other challenges that are encountered. Designed for use by physicians, nurses, nursing and medical directors, department heads, CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, COOs, and healthcare informaticians, the book aims to be a indispensible reference.

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.

Chapter 1 offers an overview of the basic computer technology. Each succeeding chapter, describes the problems in medicine, followed by a review in chronological sequence of why and how computers were applied to try to meet these problems. Only the technical aspects of computer hardware, software, and communications are discussed as they are necessary to explain how the technology was applied. This approach generally led to defining the objectives for applications of medical informatics. At the end of each chapter, the author summarizes his personal views and interpretations of the chapter contents. Although the concurrent evolution of medical informatics in Canada, Europe, and Japan certainly influenced workers in the United States, the scope of this historical review is limited to the development of medical informatics within the United States. Furthermore, this review is limited to electronic digital computers; it excludes mechanical, analog, and hybrid computers.

Imaging - Bio-informatics - Education & training - Evaluation - Security & confidentiality - Ethical, legal, & social issues - Data systems - Consumer health informatics - Workshops, panels, & invited speakers.

The extensive use of the web by patients and laymen for health information, challenges us to build information services that are easily accessible and trustworthy. The evolution towards a semantic web is addressed and papers covering all the fields of biomedical informatics are also included. [Ed.].