Health Informatics Professions

Health informatics is an interdisciplinary science that involves both the conceptual and practical tools from diverse disciplines for the understanding, invention, generation, and propagation of biological and medical information--to solve complex problems in prevention and treatment of diseases, health care, health sciences and pharmaceutical research, education, clinical/medical decision-making, and delivery of health care. As such, health informatics is an essential element of 21st-century health and biological sciences.

A few examples of health informatics applications include:

• Reducing diagnostic uncertainties and improving clinical decision-making by using computing techniques and information technologies.
• Designing interactive consultation systems to treat patients more efficiently and cost effectively by using national databases.
• Developing transportable software systems for image reconstruction and for 3-D visualization and analysis of medical imaging data.
• Analyzing health care datasets for use in clinical or biomedical research.
• Designing large databases of digitized medical images for use in medical decision- making, teleradiology, or teleconsultation.
• Designing and managing clinical, pharmacy, radiology, laboratory, or hospital information systems.