Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): Medical Informatics, sci.med.informatics This document is intended to answer some frequently asked questions about medical informatics and the newsgroup sci.med.informatics. It is posted each month. It is periodically updated and all comments and contributions are welcome. Recent changes: 5/30/95: Added: Luebeck medical informatics training site 5/11/95: Added: "What is HL7?" FAQ by Al Stone 5/02/95: Added: UPenn/Philadelphia VAMC Informatics Fellowship listed 4/18/95: Added: 3D Reconstruction Page URL, Vanderbilt Home Page URL
Contents: 1) What is medical informatics? 2) What is the purpose of the sci.med.informatics newsgroup? 3) Is this newsgroup available as a "LISTSERV" (mailing list)? 4) Where can I train in medical informatics? 5) What do people trained in Medical Informatics do? 6) How do I learn more about medical informatics? 7) What is HL7?
1) What is medical informatics? Simplistic definition: Computer applications in medical care Complicated definition: Biomedical Informatics is an emerging discipline that has been defined as the study, invention, and implementation of structures and algorithms to improve communication, understanding and management of medical information. The end objective of biomedical informatics is the coalescing of data, knowledge, and the tools necessary to apply that data and knowledge in the decision-making process, at the time and place that a decision needs to be made. The focus on the structures and algorithms necessary to manipulate the information separates Biomedical Informatics from other medical disciplines where information content is the focus. Yet another: gopher://umabnet.ab.umd.edu:152/00/ball_article 2) What is the purpose of the sci.med.informatics newsgroup? As stated in the Charter: The focus of this newsgroup will be the discussion of the grand challenges facing medical informatics today (and tomorrow). Appropriate topics include, but are not limited to: * Medical Information Standards (e.g. UMLS, HL-7) * Medical Informatics Training * IAIMS (Integrated Academic Information Management Systems) * Computerized Medical Records * Clinical Information Systems (including radiology, laboratory, pharmacy, nursing, etc.) * Physician Order Entry Systems * Computer-Aided Instruction * Medical Expert Systems * Nursing Informatics * Announcements of Interest, e.g. conferences, journals, societies * National Library of Medicine * Health Information Networks * Medical Software Reviews * Research Funding Opportunities * Policy Making (including procurement and certification of medical software) * Medical Software Engineering * Cultural/Sociologic Changes * Medical Software Security * Telemedicine * Veterinary Informatics 3) Is this newsgroup available as a "LISTSERV" (mailing list)? Not at present. However, there is a separate medical informatics mailing list "MEDINF-L"; to subscribe, send a message "SUBSCRIBE MEDINF-L <your name>" to <LISTSERV@VM.GMD.DE>. There is also an "Artificial Intelligence in Medicine" mailing list operated out of Stanford. For more information or for a subscription, e-mail to: <ai-medicine-REQUEST@med.stanford.edu>. 4) Where can I train in medical informatics? National Library of Medicine training sites in U.S.: Harvard, New England Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Stanford, Yale, Duke-UNC, Oregon Health Sciences U., Rice-Baylor, U.Missouri, Columbia, U. Minnesota Some other U.S. programs: Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Utah, Alabama, U.Washington, Harvard/Center for Clinical Computing, U.Penn/ Philadelphia VA Medical Center Outside U.S.: Victoria (Canada), Geneva (Switzerland), Heidelberg/ Heilbronn (Germany), Hildesheim (Germany), Luebeck (Germany), Manchester (UK), Campinas (Brazil) Many others exist, some of which are catalogued in the following site: gopher://umabnet.ab.umd.edu:152/11/files Contacts for most of the U.S. programs listed above can be obtained from the following WWW page: http://www-camis.stanford.edu/academics/informaticsprgms.html 5) What do people trained in Medical Informatics do? Many people who train in medical informatics have professional degrees in a health related area. Nurses, physicians, medical librarians, and computer scientists will each find their professional niche in a different area: Consultants with management consulting firms, hospital record managers, data analysts, librarians, senior staff in state health departments, programmer/ analysts in industry, and just good old family doctors. Different educational programs have varying expectations for their students future careers. It is best to contact each program to explore the range of career opportunities their graduates are prepared for. 6) How do I learn more about medical informatics? Popular textbook: Medical Informatics by Shortliffe and Perreault. Popular journals: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, M.D. Computing, Methods of Information in Medicine, Computers and Biomedical Research Other sources: Yearbook of Medical Informatics, Proceedings of Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care, MEDINFO Proceedings Good Review article: Greenes RA. Shortliffe EH. Medical informatics. An emerging academic discipline and institutional priority. JAMA.263(8):1990 Feb 23. The AI in Medicine FAQ: ftp://lhc.nlm.nih.gov/pub/ai-medicine/FAQ A Few WWW Home-Pages: Stanford: http://www-camis.stanford.edu/ Vanderbilt: http://vumclib.mc.vanderbilt.edu/ Duke: http://dmi-www.mc.duke.edu/ Yale: http://paella.med.yale.edu/ NASA 3D Reconstruction: http://biocomp.arc.nasa.gov/3dreconstruction Web search results of "medical informatics"): http://galaxy.einet.net/galaxy/Medicine/Medical-Technologies/Medical-Informatics/search-results.html 7) What is HL7? HL7 (Health Level 7) is a specification for electronic data exchange between health care institutions, particularly hospitals, and between different computer systems within hospitals. It defines standard message types (for example, admit a patient, report a lab result) with required and optional data for each. Messages are defined to be independent of computer system and communications protocol, and they are constructed so that later versions of the HL7 standard can add data elements without "breaking" systems using older versions of HL7. HL7 began as a bottom-up movement by system vendors and hospitals to replace custom-built system interfaces with a shared standard. It has become the de facto standard for hospital system interfaces in the United States. Other standards in the field include ASC X12N, widely used for insurance payment and remittance messages; and the ACR/NEMA DICOM standards for radiology images. More information on HL7 can be found on the HL7 WWW server: http://dumccss.mc.duke.edu/ftp/standards.html There is also an HL7 list server to which you can subscribe by sending the message "subscribe HL7" to <majordomo@virginia.edu>.
Acknowledgements: Dean Sittig, Robin Lake, Al Stone, Oliver Niedung, Joseph Hales. Further submissions, corrections, updates to <zakariam@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu> (c) 1995 Aamir M. Zakaria
Last-modified: 1995/05/30