Journal of Health & Medical Informatics

Special Issue: Health Informatics

Health and Medical informatics is the intersection of information science, medicine and healthcare. It began to take-off in the United States in the 1950s with the rise of the microchip and computers. Over the course of time, health and medical informatics has evolved as a new field. Today, there are multiple challenges faced in medicine pertaining to record keeping like lots of paper-based records, medication errors and documenting patient related information. It deals with the resources, devices and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information in health and biomedicine. Health informatics tools include not only computers but also medical and health data, clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, knowledge for scientific inquiry and problem solving and decision making through information and communication systems. Health informatics technology includes the electronic information technology used during the course to track patient care and drawing insights from informatics data are of increasing value.