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Publication Abstracts

The Scope and Direction of Health Informatics

Patrick J. McGinnis
Aviat Space Environ Med 2002; 73:503-7

Abstract

Health Informatics (HI) is a dynamic discipline based on the medical sciences, information sciences, and cognitive sciences. Its domain can broadly be defined as medical information management. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of this domain, discuss the current "state of the art," and indicate the likely growth areas for health informatics. The sources of information used in this paper are selected publications from the literature of Health Informatics, HI 5300: Introduction to Health Informatics, which is a course from the Department of Health Informatics at the University of Texas Houston Health Sciences Center, and the author's personal experience in practicing telemedicine and implementing an electronic medical record at the NASA-Johnson Space Center. The conclusion is that the direction of Health Informatics is in the direction of data management, transfer, and representation via electronic medical records and the Internet.

Keywords: electronic medical record, medical informatics, health informatics, telemedicine, eHealth.


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Table of Contents for Volume 73, Number 5 of the ASME journal.