Ivette Fernandez
Health Informatics History
Medical informatics is a new knowledge domain of computer and information science, engineering, and technology that encompasses all aspects of health and medicine, including research, education, and practice. Medical informatics has evolved over the last 30 years as medicine has learned to better meet its complex information needs by utilizing the extraordinary capabilities of the electronic digital computer. The first articles on this topic appeared in the 1950s, the number of publications increased rapidly in the 1960s, and medical informatics was recognized as a new specialty in the 1970s.
As a scientific discipline, medical informatics is concerned with all aspects of understanding and promoting the effective organization, analysis, management, and use of information in health care. While the general scope of these interests is shared by some other health care specialties and disciplines, Medical (Health) informatics has developed its own areas of emphasis and approaches that distinguish it from other disciplines and specialties. For the last fifty years of the twentieth century and a few more years of the twenty-first century, medical informatics experienced five distinct periods of development. The author of this paper briefly described the main scientific innovations and inventors who contributed to the development of medical informatics.
Historically there’s five periods in development of medical informatics:
The first period, from 1955 to 1965, is characterized primarily by medical experimentation and research into new technologies. Joshua Lederberg and William S. Yamamoto were the forefathers of medical informatics, showing an early interest in automatic calculation in the 1940s. The important work of Robert S. Ledley (1906-), the first medical professional to work with the first computer of the pre-transistor era seac on the development of new computing methods in the field of symbolic logics, is described, leading later to his famous work in automatic medical decision making with Lee Browning Lusted (1922-). Another significant milestone in the history of medical informatics was the development of bmdp software, which enabled the use of computers in biostatistics.
The second period from 1965 till 1975 characterizes the numerous invention activities of adequate solutions for the automatized data processing. By the end of the sixties West European countries were establishing the numerous hospital information systems. Firstly, medical equipment with built in computers were applied. The new biomedical engineer disciplines were developed; new diagnostic methods and therapeutic procedures based on the micro processing technology were introduced. In 1979 the first Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine was given for an achievement in medical informatics, the computer tomography – the laureates were Godfrey N. hounsfield
and Allan M. cormack . Computer assisted medical decision making started to develop significantly in the seventies in usa with the consultation system help of Homer R. warner and collaborators.
The third period, from 1975 to 1985, is significant because of the advancement of computer technique development, which resulted in very intensive development of the information system at all levels of the health care system, from the primary to the quarterly level. Medical informatics has increased health workers’ interest in education. The number of expert and scientific assemblies in the field of medical informatics has grown over time, and they have brought together a large number of experts of all profiles, including a significant number of doctors who have begun to engage in medical informatics professionally.
The fourth period, from 1985 to 1995, marked a new stage in the evolution of medical informatics. Furthermore, the development of healthcare informatics was accelerated, and it was meeting high standards through new methods of enabling knowledge processing and standardization. Intensive research was conducted on the improvement of artificial intelligence methods and techniques, which included the development and application of expert systems in medical diagnostics and therapy. Artificial intelligence was introduced as a separate discipline of medical informatics and began to be used in practice by a number of expert systems, about which we will speak later. During this time period, hospital information systems became more complex, functional, and qualitative than previous ones, and they supported a greater number of hospital functions.
The fifth period, from 1995 to the present, cannot be separated from the development of computer technologies. In this regard, we must emphasize once more that the field of medical informatics is much broader than just the application of electronic computers, even though the technical development of microprocessor and telecommunication technologies is heavily influenced by the development of medical informatics and cannot be imagined without electronic computers. Initially, the technical foundation (“hardware”), which is required for the development of informational systems, was unimproved and inadequate, resulting in modest and limited applications in this region. Accounting and computer technology, on the other hand, have advanced tremendously in the interim.
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Rebeca Urbina
Health Informatics
Health informatics is an important aspect of healthcare reform, it is an evolving specialism that connects healthcare, Information Technology, and communication that is geared towards the improvement of patient care quality and safety. The establishment of medical informatics can be traced back to the 1950s of the twentieth century when the first reference to the use of electronic digital computers in medicine was published. The growth of Information Technology within the last two decades of the twentieth century was very significant for medical practices, especially through the Internet and its tremendous influence on medical work. It is underlined that the Internet triggered a new revolution since medical information was accessible to the general public (McGonigle, 2021). Information science arose as a subfield of computer science, as practitioners endeavored to comprehend and justify the use of technology within organizations.
Healthcare organizations are impacted by and rely on the development and evolution of information science to help improve on the patient’s data. The data is well stored and processed to help in the improvement of the patient’s treatment and medication. In the current health care system, information science has broadened its focus to include research on human-computer interaction and interfacing (McGonigle,2021). The adaptation of Information Technologies has assisted in shaping the organization, finance, and resources. The organizations have appointed the Chief Information Officers (CIOs), who is in charge of Information Technology (IT). The increased use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) has facilitated a partnership between public and private sector parties on a wide range of healthcare data solutions. EHR helps in recording and management of patients’ data to ensure better healthcare services and treatment are provided. It has improved accuracy in data capturing leading to reduced medical error. The different systems in the healthcare organizations that worked independently have changed healthcare organizations established integrated information systems that could manage the requirements of the whole organization. The development and use of technology have had a great impact on healthcare organizations as information can be integrated and shared with ease.
Reference
McGonigle
, D., & Mastrian, K. (2018). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed). Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
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Edited by Rebeca Urbina on Jan 10, 2022, 4:21:30 PM