Medinfo 74

The modern development of medicine has been characterized by the grow ing use of new technologies in health care delivery and research. As an empirical science, medicine is based on many types and quantities of information to recognize alterations, explore causes and apply cor rective action. Dealing with biological objects, signals have to be collected, processed and interpreted to recognize the state of this object. It is therefore understandable that data processing technology and informatics have been employed to a growing extent in medicine. The increasing economic repercussions of modern medicine lead also to the demand of ways and means to assess the system as such and to develop means for evaluation and regulation. However, the application of data processing to the medical field has very often grown in parallel to and remote from the development of in formatics and data processing in general. Furthermore, difficulties have occurred resulting from the differing concepts of reasoning, deci sion making and methodology. We therefore decided to start a series of seminars with the attempt to bring scientists from both medicine and informatics together to discuss basic principles of informatics and medicine and to attempt a synthesis between the problems in medicine and health care delivery and methods in informatics to approach a solu tion of these problems. This volume contains the lecture notes of the first seminar of this type.

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.

Europe faces a challenge: how to apply information and communication technologies to health care. One problem is the widening gap between the expectations of citizens and the limited resources available to provide health services. It is here that advanced technology can serve as an important tool to find innovative and more efficient ways of delivering health services. This book reports the summary of a study performed under contract by a team of consultants for Directorate-General XIII of the Commission of the European Communities. It analyses the key factors governing the evolution of advanced information systems for health care and medicine in Europe and provides guidelines for placing current and future work within the framework of the Community research and development programmes.

"This comprehensive reference work provides immediate, fingertip access to state-of-the-art technology in nearly 700 self-contained articles written by over 900 international authorities. Each article in the Encyclopedia features current developments and trends in computers, software, vendors, and applications...extensive bibliographies of leading figures in the field, such as Samuel Alexander, John von Neumann, and Norbert Wiener...and in-depth analysis of future directions."

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.