Health Informatics Theories

The National Laboratory of Medicine defines health informatics as "the interdisciplinary study of the design, development, adoption and application of IT-based innovations in health care services, delivery, management and planning." Innovation is key to this definition because the goal is to innovate, not just to use information technology to track and find information.

Theories

• The theories and concepts behind health informatics are threefold. It involves creating a common information management infrastructure where the medical records of anyone is electronically available to any authorized medical professional or practitioner regardless of geographical location. Second, it links medical research and clinical research databases into this information management structure. Finally, it applies scientific and analytical tools to all this data with the objective of creating new decision making tools, value and innovations.

Value

• Health informatics theories, research and processes produces valuable new generations of systems and tools for health care professionals to aid them in their day-to-day practice as well as providing new educational, research and management value. This value can only increase as more and more data is accessible via the system.

Implementation

• Health care institutions are making commitments to the concept and promise of health informatics. This is evident by the fact that health care institutions are committing funding toward implementing new information systems to support and feed the health informatics infrastructure.