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Health informatics (also called health care informatics, healthcare informatics, medical informatics, nursing informatics, clinical informatics, or biomedical informatics) is a discipline at the intersection of information science, computer science, and health care. It deals with the resources, devices, and methods required to optimize the "collection, storage, retrieval, [and] communication ... of health-related data, information, and knowledge." Health informatics is applied to the areas of nursing, clinical care, dentistry, pharmacy, public health, occupational therapy, and biomedical research. Health informatics resources include not only computers but also clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, and information and communication systems.

Worldwide use of technology in medicine began in the early 1950s with the rise of computers. Medical informatics research units began to appear during the 1970s in Poland and in the U.S., with medical informatics conferences springing up as early as 1974. Since then the development of high-quality health informatics research, education, and infrastructure has been the goal of the U.S. and the European Union. Hundreds of datasets, publications, guidelines, specifications, meetings, conferences, and organizations around the world continue to shape what health informatics is today. (Full article...)

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