Health Informatics - (Under development - mountains etc. less geeky & much more fun)
This realtively new field is concerned with the "resources, devices and methods required to optimise the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information in health and biomedicine" (Wikipedia definition)
With a few exceptions such as general practice, radiology and pathology, healthcare in the UK and arguably worldwide has lagged behind other industries in the uptake of information technology and the development of electronic health records (EHRs). There are a number of reasons for this, not least the relative complexity and sensitiivty of clinical information, and a long lead time to obtian benefits form considerable changes in working practice.
There are a number of interrelated components of health informatics
Architecture
The functions of an EHR include
access of patient data by clinical staff
decision support including checks for drug and allergy interactions
care pathways and protocols
clinical notes
prescriptions
scheduling
order communications
Interoperability
Independent development of systems, in some cases at a single site, support local needs but often at the expense of being able to exchange information.
Standards
HL7
DICOM
GEHR
Read codes
SNOMED
LOINC
GALEN
Security
Clinicians have duty of confidentiality to patients, and concerns have been expressed at many levels around the vulnerability of electronic records and in particular centralised records. However fewer concerns are raised about other data being held centrally e.g banking.
Data security is not confined to confidentiality, there are two other aspects:
In these areas EHRs can confer advantages over paper records, many people will have experienced missing records and repeated data gathering and investigations.Ironically paper records are themselves not particularly secure as numerous studies have shown.
Change management
This is arguably most important and frequently the most neglected aspect of informatics. Numerous projects have used technology push without addressing demand, business process change, education and training in particular.
Bioinformatics
Currently this might be considered to be a separate field, but with the increased knowledge of the human genome there will be a significant interaction.