What Are Health Informatics?

Health informatics refers, generally, to the integration of information technologies into the fields of health and patient care. According to the University of Illinois, the scope of health informatics extends from information system implementation to communication infrastructure and development of informatics strategies for organizations. Among other things, health informatics is intended to streamline the flow of information between areas of health care, such as laboratories and physicians, to improve patient care.

History

• Health informatics, as a discipline rather than a theoretical concept, traces back to Europe. New York University reports the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Medizinische Dokumentation, Informatik und Statistik (German Society for Medical Documentation, Computer Science and Statistics), established in 1949, was the first organization dedicated to health informatics. In the United States, health informatics didn't hit its stride until the 1970s, after the development of the MUMPS programming language, which enabled medical database creation and integration. Today, the National Library of Medicine recognizes health informatics as a field and supports graduate and postgraduate education in the discipline.

Types

• Health informatics includes a number of subareas. The University of Illinois lists these areas as clinical informatics, nursing informatics, pharmacy informatics, medical informatics, health information management and health information technology. Each type of informatics focuses on a particular set of needs inside the larger structure of health care. Nursing informatics, for example, focuses on issues such as tracking and documenting patient care. Pharmacy informatics focuses on improving medication management by coordinating prescription orders against insurance databases and patient records, as well as secure electronic prescription transmission.

Benefits

• Health informatics can potentially provide a number of benefits. The University of Illinois offers that electronic records can speed up admission and treatment times for patients, saving time for the patients and health care professionals. Informatics can also reduce the duplication of tests, saving money and potentially reducing health care costs. A major benefit is that electronic data and orders can be easily read, reducing the guesswork that can accompany handwritten records and improving accuracy in health care.

Challenges

• Health informatics faces some challenges. The security of electronic information poses a major concern, given the highly sensitive nature of the records. Privacy laws, such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), limit the amount and kinds of information health care providers can disseminate, even to each another. As many of the existing systems developed at different times or for different reasons, the ability of the systems to communicate varies. Established in 2004, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health information Technology is tasked with helping to manage or solve these problems by, among other things, ensuring patient information security, coordinating policy and setting standards for health informatics products.