Health Informatics is the multidisciplinary scientific field concerned with the acquisition, storage, retrieval, communication, and optimal use of health information for problem solving and decision-making. Health Informatics has as its driving goals the improvement of health and healthcare, and the advancement of the biomedical and health sciences. Other names often used for this broad field include Medical Informatics or Biomedical Informatics.
To advance the field, health informatics professionals develop, study, and utilize methods, approaches, and technologies to address challenges in the broad healthcare domain. In doing so, work in Health Informatics calls upon but is unique from computer science, information science, cognitive science, organizational management, and the sciences of the professions to which it is applied.
The sub-disciplines of health informatics relate to various health-related professions, domains or activities to which informatics methods are applied. While the issues and challenges in these sub-disciplines can vary widely, they all share common informatics techniques. Within each sub-discipline, common elements are coupled with domain specific informatics, computational and analytical approaches.
Examples of these sub-disciplines include:
- Clinical Informatics
- Consumer Health Informatics
- Population Health Informatics
- Nursing Informatics
- Clinical Research Informatics
