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What is health informatics?
Health informatics is an interdisciplinary field that integrates information sciences, systems, and related technologies to enhance the use of health sciences knowledge, and the medical and health data it generates, to improve health care, biomedical and clinical research, patient and consumer education, healthcare organization management, and health policy. Its functions include—but are not limited to—biomedical informatics and clinical informatics.
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What do health informaticians do?
Health informaticians are well prepared to take on a diverse array of responsibilities in health care?related industries. Among other functions, health informaticians help design software for patient care; build and maintain research systems for clinical research; purchase and implement information systems that support health care; provide training and assistance to health care providers in using health information technology; conduct analyses of large health datasets; and conduct research and development to advance the science of health informatics.
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Where do health informaticians work?
Health informaticians work for hospitals; medical clinics; health systems; local, state, and federal government agencies; medical software firms; insurance companies; medical device companies; medical information services companies; colleges and universities; and more. Job prospects today are excellent—and expanding!
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What is the difference between health informatics and bioinformatics?
The emphasis in health informatics is on health, health care, and health care delivery, while bioinformatics focuses more specifically on basic research in the biological sciences. Bioinformaticians develop, and apply computational tools and approaches for expanding the use of biological data, including those to acquire, store, organize, archive, analyze, or visualize such data. Related terms include computational biology and systems biology.
