The Definition Of Health Informatics

Health informatics is a field that lies at the intersection of medicine and information technology. It deals with "the storage, retrieval, and optimal use of biomedical information, data and knowledge for problem solving and decision making," according to Vicki Sauter, a professor of information systems at the University of Missouri. The field's growing importance has made it a hot career area.

Examples

A major example of health informatics in action is in the design of electronic patient records, Sauter notes. The popularity of such records means you are likely to see your doctor or nurse taking notes about your illness on a laptop computer, rather than a paper form. Other uses include, for example, programs to help physicians decide what treatments to prescribe a patient by leading the doctor through a flow chart of options. When the doctor settles on a medication to prescribe, the software might check the medicine against others the patient is taking and warn of potential adverse reactions.

History

Health informatics has its origins in the 1950s and got a boost around 1966 when a group at Massachusetts General Hospital created the MUMPS programming language, which facilitated development of medical databases. The language still was being used as of 2010, according to the University of Illinois at Chicago. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is overseeing a strategy, including grants and other assistance to communities, to encourage widespread adoption usage of electronic medical records by 2014.

Comparison

On the world scale, the United States has been slow in embracing some of the fruits of health informatics. About 46 percent of U.S. doctors used electronic medical records as of 2009, compared with more than 90 percent of doctors in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway and Sweden, according to research by the Commonwealth Fund. National policies have resulted in higher rates in those countries.

Careers

Opportunities abound for people seeking careers in health informatics. One type of job is that of medical records or health information technician--such workers held about 172,500 jobs in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the job outlook is likely to be excellent through 2018. With a bachelor's or master's degree in health information management, according to career coach Marty Nemko, "you're likely to have a good, secure job waiting that will play a crucial role in improving the quality of American health care."

Benefits

Health informatics can help hospitals treat patients more quickly because their records are easier to call up, according to the University of Illinois at Chicago. It also helps health care providers to gather and analyze statistics so they know what works and what does not when prescribing medicines, performing surgeries and completing other functions. Doctors can more effectively avoid errors as computers anticipate and warn of potential complications that could result from certain treatment plans.