Health Informatics

What is Health Informatics? How does this relate to eHealth?

The Australian Health Informatics Education Council has described Health Informatics as the body of knowledge that concerns the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information in, about and for human health, and the design and management of related information resources, devices and methods to advance the understanding and practice of healthcare. Since the emergence of national and international Health Informatics interest groups in the 1970s, there has been substantial consensus on the core elements of Health Informatics as a discipline:

• Electronic health records, decision support systems and other health information systems
• Standards, including controlled vocabularies and technical standards, to facilitate the exchange of existing health data types and to accommodate and translate emerging data types and technologies • information and communication networks and devices in healthcare provision and health science research
• Human-computer interaction related to patient information, clinical care, population health and health policy. Because the discipline of Health Informatics integrates three fields of study – health science, computer science and information science – it has been variously identified with particular perspectives within these contributory fields.

Subdomains of Health Informatics include:

• Those identified with a specific clinical or profession, for example dental, medical, nursing or pharmacy informatics although a more general clinical informatics has been recognized as a Health Informatics specialty in the USA.
• Those identified with non point of care clinical interests in healthcare, for example health management informatics, health information management informatics or public health informatics.
• Those identified with particular technology trends in healthcare, for example, e-health (the Internet and Web); ihealth (interactive and personalised technologies); mhealth (mobile phones or other mobile devices); tele-health (digital audiovisual technologies), healthcare messaging and clinical terminologies.

Health Informatics Specialties

eHealth Education has developed a Health Systems Data and Data Usage Framework and adopted nine Health Informatics specialities described below. All our courses are organised and coded relative to this discipline reference model.

eHealth

The study of electronic health and medical records, their content, structure, usage, linkage with numerous software applications, measuring patient outcomes, managing patient safety. This includes the commitment in writing, as authentic evidence, of something having legal importance, the management of automated forms, electronic clinical communication such as referrals, prescribing, consultation across organisational and jurisdictional boundaries, supporting decision making, consumer and care giver participation in patient/consumer care management. Our educational focus is on these clinical informatics topics as applied to our Health data and data usage framework.

Health Data Representation and Knowledge

The study of health and medical data, facts and figures, information and knowledge and how these are collected, represented, systematically organised, summarised, authenticated, validated, documented, analysed, disseminated, classified based on common characteristics, managed, governed, and/or processed through the application of computers. This includes methods used to systematically gather data for a specific purpose, such as systems used for quality management, manipulate, retrieve and publish as well as the provision of information services including those associated with the maintenance and governance of classification, controlled clinical terms vocabularies and terminology systems. Our educational focus is on these topics as applied to our Health data and data usage framework.

Health Systems

The study of aspects associated with the delivery of health services within a large geographical area such as a State or Nation or a large corporate healthcare provider. It includes principles, models, and laws that apply to complex interrelationships and interdependencies of sets of linked components which form a functioning whole. This also applies to components that are systems in their own right supporting specific functions within the health system. Our educational focus is on the use of information technologies to support electronic data exchange and all associated operational functions relative to our Health Systems data and data usage framework.

Health Information Systems

The study of aspect associated with the integration and electronic communication of organisational, clinical and patient information files, procedures, and equipment in use in the Health industry for the purpose of collecting, storing, processing and retrieving information necessary to support various functions associated with the management and delivery of health care services. This includes the integration and communication of knowledge files such as practice guidelines, protocols as well as databases used to store and structure basic sets of data from which computer readable files are created to suit multiple purposes associated with professional practice. Our educational focus is on these functions as applied to our Health Systems data and data usage framework.

Health Information & Communication Technologies

The study of computer systems with a focus on hardware technologies , devices and equipment required to link and make use of systems and enable electronic communication to be realised across organisational boundaries via computer communication networks with the potential to exchange information across the globe in a secure manner. This includes the use of computers to design or produce anything for use in the health industry as well as modelling systems , workflow or information flow processes and natural language processing . Our educational focus is on these topics as applied to our Health Systems data and data usage framework.

Health Informatics Standards

The study of technical health informatics standards development processes, standards and their use to achieve various degrees of system interoperability, system integration, data linkage, secure and effective system networks, enable systems to meet functional and transactional requirements. This includes how standards are tested, standards compliance is evaluated, certified and validated. Our educational focus is on these topics as applied to our Health Systems data and data usage framework.

Health Human Resources

The study of all people issues including human-computer interaction, user computer interfaces, personal communication, ethical conduct, recognition of computer and information literacy, professional and/or technical competence and performance, professional conduct including sensitive information and identity management, social and economic factors that characterize the individual or group within social or organisational or cultural structure, legal compliance. Our educational focus is on how people make use of technologies to support the provision of healthcare services relative to our Health Systems data and data usage framework.

Public Health Informatics

The study of the field of information science and informatics as systematically applied to the fields of public health and epidemiology. This includes the use of registers and large databases, and associated technologies to monitor the characteristics and behaviour of disease outbreaks effecting human populations within specified environments. Our educational focus is on these topics as applied to our Health Systems data and data usage framework.

Nursing Informatics

The study of the field of information science and informatics as detailed above but applied to the field of nursing. Our educational focus is on these topics as applied to our Health Systems data and data usage framework.