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Purpose Informatics is a relatively new interdisciplinary field which is not very well understood outside of specific disciplinary communities. With a review of the history of informatics and a discussion of the various branches of informatics related to health-care practice, the paper aims to provide an overview designed to enhance the understanding of an information professional interested in this field. Design/methodology/approach The paper is designed to provide a basic introduction to the topic of informatics for information professionals unfamiliar with the field. Using a combination of historical and current sources, the role of informatics in the health professions is explored through its history and development. Findings The emergence of informatics as a discipline is a relatively recent phenomenon. Informatics is neither information technology (IT) nor information science but shares many common interests, concerns and techniques with these other two fields. The role of the informaticist is to transform data to knowledge and information. Consequently, while the outcomes may be different, there are many commonalities in informatics with the work information professionals perform. Originality/value Most introductions to informatics assume the reader is either an IT professional or a clinical practitioner in one of the health science fields. This paper takes a unique approach by positioning the discussion of the history and application of informatics in the health sciences from the perspective of the information professional.

The field of biomedical informatics experienced a productive 2015 in terms of research. In order to highlight the accomplishments of that research, elicit trends, and identify shortcomings at a macro level, a 19-person team conducted an extensive review of the literature in clinical and consumer informatics. The result of this process included a year-in-review presentation at the American Medical Informatics Association Annual Symposium and a written report (see supplemental data). Key findings are detailed in the report and summarized here. This article organizes the clinical and consumer health informatics research from 2015 under 3 themes: the electronic health record (EHR), the learning health system (LHS), and consumer engagement. Key findings include the following: (1) There are significant advances in establishing policies for EHR feature implementation, but increased interoperability is necessary for these to gain traction. (2) Decision support systems improve practice behaviors, but evidence of their impact on clinical outcomes is still lacking. (3) Progress in natural language processing (NLP) suggests that we are approaching but have not yet achieved truly interactive NLP systems. (4) Prediction models are becoming more robust but remain hampered by the lack of interoperable clinical data records. (5) Consumers can and will use mobile applications for improved engagement, yet EHR integration remains elusive.

Purpose – This paper aims to describe the emerging field of data science, its significance in the larger information landscape and some issues that distinguish the problems of data science and informatics from traditional approaches in the information sciences. Design/methodology/approach – Through a general overview of the topic, the author discusses some of the major aspects of how work in the data sciences and informatics differ from traditional library and information science. Findings – Data science and informatics, as emerging fields, are expanding our understanding of how the massive amount of information currently being generated can be collected, managed and used. While these may not be traditional “library” problems, the contributions of the library and information science communities are critical to help address aspects of these issues. Originality/value – The emerging fields of data science and informatics have not been extensively explored from the perspective of the information professional. This paper is designed to help information professionals better understand some of the implications of data science in a changing information environment.

Big data technologies are increasingly used for biomedical and health-care informatics research. Large amounts of biological and clinical data have been generated and collected at an unprecedented speed and scale. For example, the new generation of sequencing technologies enables the processing of billions of DNA sequence data per day, and the application of electronic health records (EHRs) is documenting large amounts of patient data. The cost of acquiring and analyzing biomedical data is expected to decrease dramatically with the help of technology upgrades, such as the emergence of new sequencing machines, the development of novel hardware and software for parallel computing, and the extensive expansion of EHRs. Big data applications present new opportunities to discover new knowledge and create novel methods to improve the quality of health care. The application of big data in health care is a fast-growing field, with many new discoveries and methodologies published in the last five years. In this paper, we review and discuss big data application in four major biomedical subdisciplines: (1) bioinformatics, (2) clinical informatics, (3) imaging informatics, and (4) public health informatics. Specifically, in bioinformatics, high-throughput experiments facilitate the research of new genome-wide association studies of diseases, and with clinical informatics, the clinical field benefits from the vast amount of collected patient data for making intelligent decisions. Imaging informatics is now more rapidly integrated with cloud platforms to share medical image data and workflows, and public health informatics leverages big data techniques for predicting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks, such as Ebola. In this paper, we review the recent progress and breakthroughs of big data applications in these health-care domains and summarize the challenges, gaps, and opportunities to improve and advance big data applications in health care.

Display Omitted Cognitive informatics (CI) research has its foundations in cognitive science.Transformations seen in CI in JBI reflect the changes seen broadly in the field of CI.Key topics include decision-making, usability, comprehension, workflow and errors.Recent developments toward use of applied cognition for usability and HCI studies.Future trends point toward consumer health tools and the use of mobile technology. Cognitive Informatics (CI) is a burgeoning interdisciplinary domain comprising of the cognitive and information sciences that focuses on human information processing, mechanisms and processes within the context of computing and computer applications. Based on a review of articles published in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics (JBI) between January 2001 and March 2014, we identified 57 articles that focused on topics related to cognitive informatics. We found that while the acceptance of CI into the mainstream informatics research literature is relatively recent, its impact has been significant - from characterizing the limits of clinician problem-solving and reasoning behavior, to describing coordination and communication patterns of distributed clinical teams, to developing sustainable and cognitively-plausible interventions for supporting clinician activities. Additionally, we found that most research contributions fell under the topics of decision-making, usability and distributed team activities with a focus on studying behavioral and cognitive aspects of clinical personnel, as they performed their activities or interacted with health information systems. We summarize our findings within the context of the current areas of CI research, future research directions and current and future challenges for CI researchers.

In this article are considered the integrant importance of informatics and informational technologys includes the sciences and the humanities.There are a differences between scientifi c grounds of the various information orientations, which include physical informatics, bioinfomatics, technical and social informatics. Creation of a united theoretical base for these orientations is very problematical. The metodologically important issue of classifi cation different informatics is a part of the general informatics, the example of which are considered here.

Education in biomedical and health informatics (BMHI) has been established in many countries throughout the world. For degree programs in BMHI we can distinguish between those that are completely stand-alone or dedicated to the discipline vs. those that are integrated within another program. After running integrated degree medical informatics programs at TU Braunschweig for 10 years at the B.Sc. and for 15 years at the M.Sc level, we (1) report about this educational approach, (2) analyze recommendations on, implementations of, and experiences with degree educational programs in BMHI worldwide, (3) summarize our lessons learned with the integrated approach at TU Braunschweig, and (4) suggest an answer to the question, whether degree programs in biomedical and health informatics should be dedicated or integrated. According to our experience at TU Braunschweig and based on our analysis of publications, there is a clear dominance of dedicated degree programs in BMHI. The specialization in medical informatics within a computer science program, as offered at TU Braunschweig, may be a good way of implementing an integrated, informatics-based approach to medical informatics, in particular if a dual degree option can be chosen. The option of curricula leading to double degrees, i.e. in this case to two separate degrees in computer science and in medical informatics might, however, be a better solution.

Health informatics is becoming more important to the delivery of health and health care and more diverse in the kinds of settings and expertise that health informatics professionals will need to be successful. Precision medicine initiatives will need to leverage translational informatics and data sciences to connect genomic and data insights with actionable clinical information. Consumer-focused health devices and electronic health records raise issues of interoperability, usability, and workflow integration that are essential to applied informatics professionals. In the health policy realm, changing models of reimbursement not only will require population health and data sciences expertise, but also will require knowing the right questions to ask and how to integrate the answers into health care. It is the informatics professionals, represented by AMIA’s 5,300-plus members, who possess the leadership and expertise to contribute across these domains and to make a real difference in how information is collected, analyzed, and used to improve the health of our society. But other organizations are seeing the importance of health informatics and the potential for financial and marketing opportunities. Programs are springing up that profess to teach health informatics, but are using faculty who lack informatics training and are teaching to a curriculum that does not include core informatics concepts. Associations are offering …

Engineering human health and healthcare delivery is one of the most significant open frontiers for progress by computational scientists. This article focuses on the opportunities and challenges of Big Data in transforming healthcare delivery.

SummaryBackground: In 2009, Applied Clinical Informatics (ACI) – focused on applications in clinical informatics – was launched as a companion journal to Methods of Information in Medicine (MIM). Both journals are official journals of the International Medical Informatics Association.Objectives: To explore which congruencies and interdependencies exist in publications from theory to practice and from practice to theory and to determine existing gaps. Major topics discussed in ACI and MIM were analyzed. We explored if the intention of publishing companion journals to provide an information bridge from informatics theory to informatics practice and vice versa could be supported by this model. In this manuscript we will report on congruencies and interdependences from practice to theory and on major topics in MIM.Methods: Retrospective, prolective observational study on recent publications of ACI and MIM. All publications of the years 2012 and 2013 were indexed and analyzed.Results: Hundred and ninety-six publications were analyzed (ACI 87, MIM 109). In MIM publications, modelling aspects as well as methodological and evaluation approaches for the analysis of data, information, and knowledge in biomedicine and health care were frequently raised – and often discussed from an interdisciplinary point of view. Important themes were ambient-assisted living, anatomic spatial relations, biomedical informatics as scientific discipline, boosting, coding, computerized physician order entry, data analysis, grid and cloud computing, health care systems and services, health-enabling technologies, health information search, health information systems, imaging, knowledge-based decision support, patient records, signal analysis, and web science. Congruencies between journals could be found in themes, but with a different focus on content. Interdependencies from practice to theory, found in these publications, were only limited.Conclusions: Bridging from informatics theory to practice and vice versa remains a major component of successful research and practice as well as a major challenge.Citation: Haux R, Lehmann CU. From bed to bench: Bridging from informatics practice to theory – an exploratory analysis. Appl Clin Inf 2014; 5: 907–915http://dx.doi.org/10.4338/ACI-2014-10-RA-0095

BACKGROUND As clinical data are increasingly collected and stored electronically, their potential use for comparative effectiveness research (CER) grows. Despite this promise, challenges face those wishing to leverage such data. In this paper we aim to enumerate some of the knowledge management and informatics issues common to such data reuse. DESIGN After reviewing the current state of knowledge regarding biomedical informatics challenges and best practices related to CER, we then present 2 research projects at our institution. We analyze these and highlight several common themes and challenges related to the conduct of CER studies. Finally, we represent these emergent themes. RESULTS The informatics challenges commonly encountered by those conducting CER studies include issues related to data information and knowledge management (eg, data reuse, data preparation) as well as those related to people and organizational issues (eg, sociotechnical factors and organizational factors). Examples of these are described in further detail and a formal framework for describing these findings is presented. CONCLUSIONS Significant challenges face researchers attempting to use often diverse and heterogeneous datasets for CER. These challenges must be understood in order to be dealt with successfully and can often be overcome with the appropriate use of informatics best practices. Many research and policy questions remain to be answered in order to realize the full potential of the increasingly electronic clinical data available for such research.

The volumes of current patient data as well as their complexity make clinical decision making more challenging than ever for physicians and other care givers. This situation calls for the use of biomedical informatics methods to process data and form recommendations and/or predictions to assist such decision makers. The design, implementation, and use of biomedical informatics systems in the form of computer-aided decision support have become essential and widely used over the last two decades. This paper provides a brief review of such systems, their application protocols and methodologies, and the future challenges and directions they suggest.

Biomedical informatics has become a central focus for many academic medical centers and universities as biomedical research because increasingly reliant on the processing, analysis, and interpretation of large volumes of data, information, and knowledge. We posit here that this is the beginning of the golden era of biomedical informatics with opportunity for this maturing discipline to have a substantial impact on the biggest questions and challenges facing efforts to improve human health and the healthcare system.

Summary Objective: This paper presents the development of medical informatics education during the years from the establishment of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) until today. Method: A search in the literature was performed using search engines and appropriate keywords as well as a manual selection of papers. The search covered English language papers and was limited to search on papers title and abstract only. Results: The aggregated papers were analyzed on the basis of the subject area, origin, time span, and curriculum development, and conclusions were drawn. Conclusions: From the results, it is evident that IMIA has played a major role in comparing and integrating the Biomedical and Health Informatics educational efforts across the different levels of education and the regional distribution of educators and institutions. A large selection of references is presented facilitating future work on the field of education in biomedical and health informatics.

The behavioral and psychological sciences have generated a robust knowledge base over the last two decades that can be leveraged to advance oncology informatics and improve cancer control. In this chapter, we contend that the behavioral and psychological sciences add value through articulating the most promising theoretical models and approaches for designing, developing, and evaluating digital health technologies and informatics solutions. Examples in clinical care settings are given that illustrate how fundamental behavioral and psychological constructs inform the design and evaluation of clinical decision support systems for tobacco cessation, emotional distress screening and management, physical activity promotion, and for creating automated conversational agents for support and assistance in understanding complex consent forms. The future success of oncology informatics is predicated on drawing from the best available scientific evidence and behavioral informatics can serve as a core resource.

Medical Imaging Informatics provides an overview of this growing discipline, which stems from an intersection of biomedical informatics, medical imaging, computer science and medicine. Supporting two complementary views, this volume explores the fundamental technologies and algorithms that comprise this field, as well as the application of medical imaging informatics to subsequently improve healthcare research. Clearly written in a four part structure, this introduction follows natural healthcare processes, illustrating the roles of data collection and standardization, context extraction and modeling, and medical decision making tools and applications. Medical Imaging Informatics identifies core concepts within the field, explores research challenges that drive development, and includes current state-of-the-art methods and strategies.

Summaryto select and summarize excellent research published during 2011 in the study of human factors in bio-medical informatics.we attempt to derive a synthetic overview of the activity and new trends in this field, from a wide selection of worldwide research papers published during 2011.We selected four papers. The first one presents an international effort aiming to design a guideline for good evaluation practice in health informatics (GEP-HI) [2]. The second reviews medical errors taxonomies from a human factor perspective [3]. The third one advocates the need to systematically perform a deep evaluation process after all healthcare information technologies project deployment [4]. The fourth one explores exit strategies performed by clinician using health record system and how/why we need to anticipate them [5].This papers selection will provide our readers with valuable evidences on past and existing research in the specific field of human factors in healthcare informatics. It can also act as a foundation for stakeholders in the healthcare industry that emphasize the significance of human factors and ergonomics in designing healthcare information systems of the future.

Clinical research informatics is the rapidly evolving sub-discipline within biomedical informatics that focuses on developing new informatics theories, tools, and solutions to accelerate the full translational continuum: basic research to clinical trials (T1), clinical trials to academic health center practice (T2), diffusion and implementation to community practice (T3), and 'real world' outcomes (T4). We present a conceptual model based on an informatics-enabled clinical research workflow, integration across heterogeneous data sources, and core informatics tools and platforms. We use this conceptual model to highlight 18 new articles in the JAMIA special issue on clinical research informatics.

SummaryBackground: In the past decade, Medical Informatics (MI) and Bioinformatics (BI) have converged towards a new discipline, called Biomedical Informatics (BMI) bridging informatics methods across the spectrum from genomic research to personalized medicine and global healthcare. This convergence still raises challenging research questions which are being addressed by researchers internationally, which in turn raises the question of how biomedical informatics publications reflect the contributions from around the world in documenting the research.Objectives: To analyse the worldwide participation of biomedical informatics researchers from professional groups and societies in the best-known scientific conferences in the field. The analysis is focused on their geographical affiliation, but also includes other features, such as the impact and recognition of the conferences.Methods: We manually collected data about authors of papers presented at three major MI conferences: Medinfo, MIE and the AMIA symposium. In addition, we collected data from a BI conference, ISMB, as a comparison. Finally, we analyzed the impact and recognition of these conferences within their scientific contexts.Results: Data indicate a predominance of local authors at the regional conferences (AMIA and MIE), whereas other conferences with a worldwide scope (Medinfo and ISMB) had broader participation. Our analysis shows that the influence of these conferences beyond the discipline remains somewhat limited.Conclusions: Our results suggest that for BMI to be recognized as a broad discipline, both in the geographical and scientific sense, it will need to extend the scope of collaborations and their interdisciplinary impacts worldwide.

Introduced the teaching of medical informatics at home and abroad, analyzed the significance of medical informatics studied in medical colleges, discussed the content of medical informatics that should teach, and the problem should pay attention to. Medical informatics is an interdisciplinary science of the information technology and medical science. Information technology (IT) is drawing more attention to medical institutes and is used extensively. It has become increasingly popular to utilize IT providing a better service to hospital, the patient science and research, and education. Therefore, extensive medical informatics teaching has become a necessity among medical students.

Healthcare industry is undergoing one of the most massive transformations ever seen in any other industries. There will be an escalation of challenges facing the healthcare industry in the next few decades. Among these challenges are proliferation of new technology and information management within the healthcare system. Pathology services pride itself in driving the medical changes through adaptation of new technology into the healthcare system, especially in combination with the sophisticated pathology informatics systems. The pathology informatics systems are arguably the most advanced and sophisticated information systems within the healthcare sector for many years. Some of the most exciting news in medicine such as the human genome project and the messaging and taxonomy standardisation all involve pathology services and pathology informatics [1]. In the next few decades, medical care will experience unprecedented velocity of technology advancement. Pathology services and pathology informatics will continue to lead the transformation of medical care through genomic, proteinomics, tandem mass spectrometry and micro-array technologies [1]. From the view of pathology service and pathology informatics, the next few decades are going to be exciting yet challenging. The “omics” technology and biomedical informatics will gradually merge together and be an integral part in the deep sea of laboratory medicine. These new advances will not only have significant impact in the delivery of the diagnostic and the therapeutic manoeuvres, but also in the workflow of medical practice and ethos of patient care delivery. While the technical aspect of laboratory medicine will continue to revolutionise healthcare system, the associated changes within the socio-cultural context of medical practice is unclear. This study explores the issues of socio-technical interaction with advances in pathology services and pathology informatics. This study aims to provide a conceptual framework for future discussion about socio-cultural integration of technology and pathology informatics into the healthcare system to provide seamless patient-centred care delivery which would provide provider-client understanding of the service delivery system in an user friendly way. Firstly, the study describes a hypothetical case, the technical aspect of which is achievable in the next decades by advances in biomedical informatics. By using the hypothetical case, the paper explores the socio-cultural challenges imposed by advances in technology on pathologists, clinicians and consumers. The paper reveals the barriers and challenges faced by future pathology informatics within the constrains of current organisational and professional structures of the healthcare system. It then explores the ethical, social and cultural aspects of consumers of the future. While the “omics” future might be real from technological perspective, we, the healthcare workers and consumers might not be ready then for it!

Accelerating the translation of new scientific discoveries to improve human health and disease management is the overall goal of a series of initiatives integrated in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “Roadmap for Medical Research.” The Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program is, arguably, the most visible component of the NIH Roadmap providing resources to institutions to transform their clinical and translational research enterprises along the goals of the Roadmap. The CTSA program emphasizes biomedical informatics as a critical component for the accomplishment of the NIH's translational objectives. To be optimally effective, emerging biomedical informatics programs must link with the information technology platforms of the enterprise clinical operations within academic health centers. This report details one academic health center's transdisciplinary initiative to create an integrated academic discipline of biomedical informatics through the development of its infrastructure for clinical and translational science infrastructure and response to the CTSA mechanism. This approach required a detailed informatics strategy to accomplish these goals. This transdisciplinary initiative was the impetus for creation of a specialized biomedical informatics core, the Center for Biomedical Informatics (CBI). Development of the CBI codified the need to incorporate medical informatics including quality and safety informatics and enterprise clinical information systems within the CBI. This article describes the steps taken to develop the biomedical informatics infrastructure, its integration with clinical systems at one academic health center, successes achieved, and barriers encountered during these efforts.

Editor's Summary The area of health informatics applies information science methods to analyze and understand health care information, to progress from raw data to knowledge, for improved problem solving, decision-making and care delivery. With the field still relatively young and subspecialties already branching off, the terminology and scope continue to evolve. The fundamental model is shifting from treatment of an illness to wellness and disease prevention and viewing an individual's daily life in the broad context of factors that influence health. As the field takes shape, professional education is typically originating in health education for the informatician or in information science and technology for the health informaticist, with complementary coursework to expand understanding of and competency in the interdisciplinary field. The rapid growth and high demand for health informatics is stimulating an expansion of educational opportunities with degrees at all levels both in the United States and at international institutions. Conferences, professional publications and online resources on the topic multiply, serving those interested in making health informatics a career.

Information and data management are essential to support the collaborative and interdisciplinary pursuits of an academic veterinary medicine enterprise, ranging from research conducted by individual investigators, education processes, clinical care, and outreach to administration and management. Informatics is an academic discipline that focuses on the creation, management, storage, retrieval, and use of information and data and how technology can be applied to improve access to and use of these resources. In this article, we discuss the challenges in integrating informatics across a large academic enterprise from a veterinary medicine point of view. As a case study, we describe an example program of informatics at the University of Minnesota designed to support interdisciplinary collaboration.

This paper presents the results of an author co-citation analysis of the health and medical informatics discipline. It updates a smaller study that focused on health information systems. Drawing on such sub-fields as bio informatics, clinical decision support systems, computational genomics, e-health, health informatics, and others, this body of knowledge defines the core internal structure of the discipline and delineates its sub-fields. An author co-citation analysis was performed for a nine-year period using the members of editorial boards of several medical informatics-related journals as an initial author sample (N = 272). Several multivariate analyses, including cluster analysis, factor analysis and multidimensional scaling, were performed. The authors results confirm that several established sub-fields still stand but a number of new sub-fields are emerging. Future research can build on this work and examine other journals and additional authors to gain insights into the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the health and medical informatics discipline.

Objective To reflect about medical informatics as a discipline. To suggest significant future research directions with the purpose of stimulating further discussion. Methods Exploring and discussing important developments in medical informatics from the past and in the present by way of examples. Reflecting on the role of IMIA, the International Medical Informatics Association, in influencing the discipline. Results Medical informatics as a discipline is still young. Today, as a cross-sectional discipline, it forms one of the bases for medicine and health care. As a consequence considerable responsibility rests on medical informatics for improving the health of people, through its contributions to high-quality, efficient health care and to innovative research in biomedicine and related health and computer sciences. Current major research fields can be grouped according to the organization, application, and evaluation of health information systems, to medical knowledge representation, and to the underlying signal and data analyses and interpretations. Yet, given the fluid nature of many of the driving forces behind progress in information processing methods and their technologies, progress in medicine and health care, and the rapidly changing needs, requirements and expectations of human societies, we can expect many changes in future medical informatics research. Future research fields might range from seamless interactivity with automated data capture and storage, via informatics diagnostics and therapeutics, to living labs with data analysis methodology, involving sensor-enhanced ambient environments. The role of IMIA, the International Medical Informatics Association, for building a cooperative, strongly connected, and research-driven medical informatics community worldwide can hardly be underestimated. Conclusions Health care continuously changes as the underlying science and practice of health are in continuous transformation. Medical informatics as a discipline is strongly affected by these changes and is in a position to be a key, active contributor in these changes.

Many areas of science such as biology, medicine and oceanography are becoming increasingly data-rich and most programs that train scientists do not address informatics techniques or technologies that are necessary for managing and analysing large amounts of data. Educational resources for scientists in informatics are scarce, yet scientists need the skills and knowledge to work with informaticians and manage graduate students and post-docs in informatics projects. The Marine Biological Laboratory houses a world-renowned library and is involved in a number of informatics projects in the sciences. The MBL has been home to the National Library of Medicine's BioMedical Informatics Course for nearly two decades and is committed to educating scientists and other scholars in informatics. In an innovative, immersive learning experience, G.Y., a biologist and post-doc at Arizona State University, visited the Science Informatics Group at the MBL to learn first hand how informatics is done and how informatics teams work. Hands-on work with developers, systems administrators, librarians and other scientists provided an invaluable education in informatics and is a model for future science informatics training.

The evolution of research into the scientific information phenomenon and the patterns of scientific and information activity are outlined. The necessity of extending the subject of the investigation of scientific informatics and transforming it into a science about semantic information is shown. The scientific and organizational results of the half century of the development of scientific informatics are summed up and the premises for setting semantic informatics are noted.

At its core, the practice of medicine is an information-intensive endeavor. Most of what physicians do involves the collection, review, and management of information. Examples of such activities include obtaining and recording patient information, consulting colleagues, reading the scientific literature, planning diagnostic procedures, devising strategies for patient care, interpreting tests, and conducting research. The ever-increasing biomedical knowledge base that must be considered to deliver optimal patient care only adds to the challenges facing medicine today. Successfully addressing these challenges to deliver the best health care possible requires not only the existence of valid and generalizable data sets derived from systematic basic, clinical, and epidemiological research efforts but also the ability to apply the knowledge derived from these research efforts at the point of care. It is easy to understand, therefore, why the field of biomedical informatics, a field that is concerned with collecting, managing, and optimally using information in health care and biomedicine, is critical to the current and future practice of medicine and the study of healthcare outcomes that result from such practice.1,2 Biomedical informatics approaches and related health information technology (health IT) platforms are key to enabling knowledge-driven healthcare and practice improvement initiatives based on a solid research foundation. Similar biomedical informatics approaches and resources are also critical to advancing outcomes research. Indeed, such technologies such as electronic health records (EHRs), clinical data repositories, and research-specific data management systems are already transforming the way we practice medicine and conduct research. This transformation is being further advanced by federally directed funding and research infrastructure development efforts.3,4 In the sections that follow, we provide an overview of how biomedical informatics and health IT processes and tools can affect the conduct of research and the delivery of evidence-based health care from our perspective. Given the current state of development …

Summary Objectives To analyze the role that biomedical informatics could play in the application of the NBIC Converging Technologies in the medical field and raise awareness of these new areas throughout the Biomedical Informatics community. Methods Review of the literature and analysis of the reference documents in this domain from the biomedical informatics perspective. Detailing existing developments showing that partial convergence of technologies have already yielded relevant results in biomedicine (such as bioinformatics or biochips). Input from current projects in which the authors are involved is also used. Results Information processing is a key issue in enabling the convergence of NBIC technologies. Researchers in biomedical informatics are in a privileged position to participate and actively develop this new scientific direction. The experience of biomedical informaticians in five decades of research in the medical area and their involvement in the completion of the Human and other genome projects will help them participate in a similar role for the development of applications of converging technologies —particularly in nanomedicine. Conclusions The proposed convergence will bring bridges between traditional disciplines. Particular attention should be placed on the ethical, legal, and social issues raised by the NBIC convergence. These technologies provide new directions for research and education in Biomedical Informatics placing a greater emphasis in multidisciplinary approaches.

To implement personalized medicine successfully, multidisciplinary teams of collaborating scientists must manage and analyze vast quantities of genomic and clinical outcomes data in a cohesive and integrated way. This process is complex and not supported by the existing IT infrastructure and tools available to most researchers. To address these needs, the National Cancer Institute initiated the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid initiative in 2004, to develop and deploy the interoperable IT infrastructure and tools needed to help basic and clinical researchers manage and share these data. Now, the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid is being deployed to cancer centers and other biomedical research organizations across the USA and around the world, facilitating collaborative research that will ultimately lead to improved patient outcomes.

Why am I writing a commentary on the topic of “Informatics or Information Technology for Cancer Research: Which Is It?” The short answer is that I was invited to do so by the Editor-in-Chief becaus...

Summary Objectives: To clarify challenges and research topics for informatics in health and to describe new approaches for interdisciplinary collaboration and education. Methods: Research challenges and possible solutions were elaborated by scientists of two universities using an interdisciplinary approach, in a series of meetings over several months. Results and Conclusion: In order to translate scientific results from bench to bedside and further into an evidence-based and efficient health system, intensive collaboration is needed between experts from medicine, biology, informatics, engineering, public health, as well as social and economic sciences. Research challenges can be attributed to four areas: bioinformatics and systems biology, biomedical engineering and informatics, health informatics and individual healthcare, and public health informatics. In order to bridge existing gaps between different disciplines and cultures, we suggest focusing on interdisciplinary education, taking an integrative approach and starting interdisciplinary practice at early stages of education.* See more detailed authors´ affiliations at the end of the article.

SummaryThe purpose of this paper is to describe biomedical informatics training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW Madison).We reviewed biomedical informatics training, research, and faculty/trainee participation at UW-Madison.There are three primary approaches to training 1) The Computation & Informatics in Biology & Medicine Training Program, 2) formal biomedical informatics offered by various campus departments, and 3) individualized programs. Training at UW-Madison embodies the features of effective biomedical informatics training recommended by the American College of Medical Informatics that were delineated as: 1) curricula that integrate experiences among computational sciences and application domains, 2) individualized and interdisciplinary cross training among adiverse cadre of trainees to develop key competencies that he or she does not initially possess, 3) participation in research and development activities, and 4) exposure to a range of basic informational and computational sciences.The three biomedical informatics training approaches immerse students in multidisciplinary training and education that is supported by faculty trainers who participate in collaborative research across departments. Training is provided across a range of disciplines and available at different training stages. Biomedical informatics training at UW-Madison illustrates how a large research University, with multiple departments across biological, computational and health fields, can provide effective and productive biomedical informatics training via multiple bioinformatics training approaches.

The application of informatics to neuroscience goes far beyond 'traditional' bioinformatics modalities such as DNA sequences. In this review, we describe how informatics is being used to study the nervous system at multiple levels, spanning scales from molecules to behavior. The continuing development of standards for data exchange and interoperability, together with increasing awareness and acceptance of the importance of data sharing, are among the key efforts required to advance the field.

In this article we have provided an overview of current approaches related to biomedical informatics (BMI), GRID, and genomic medicine, particularly in Europe. Research on areas such as ontologies, data mining, information retrieval, or semantic interoperability is redefining current informatics methodologies to support biomedical research. While traditional disciplines such as BI, MI, and neuroinformatics will keep their characteristics and independence, some initiatives are being supported, such as in BMI, to enhance synergy among them and other "omics" disciplines, going beyond the actual vision of interdisciplinary research. This synergy, currently addressed by BMI and GRID projects, is being extended, at a conceptual level, to include other areas. In this regard, workshops and activities have been supported by the Directorate General Information Society of the EC since 2004 . These have discussed the visions and challenges in an intersecting area at the boundary between informatics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and cognitive science.

Unprecedented growth in the interdisciplinary domain of biomedical informatics reflects the recent advancements in genomic sequence availability, high-content biotechnology screening systems, as well as the expectations of computational biology to command a leading role in drug discovery and disease characterization. These forces have moved much of life sciences research almost completely into the computational domain. Importantly, educational training in biomedical informatics has been limited to students enrolled in the life sciences curricula, yet much of the skills needed to succeed in biomedical informatics involve or augment training in information technology curricula. This manuscript describes the methods and rationale for training students enrolled in information technology curricula in the field of biomedical informatics, which augments the existing information technology curriculum and provides training on specific subjects in Biomedical Informatics not emphasized in bioinformatics courses offered in life science programs, and does not require prerequisite courses in the life sciences.

Objective Modeling is a significant part of research, education and practice in biomedical and health informatics. Our objective was to explore which types of models of processes are used in current biomedical/health informatics research, as reflected in publications of scientific journals in this field. Also, the implications for medical informatics curricula were investigated. Methods Retrospective, prolective observational study on recent publications of the two official journals of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), the International Journal of Medical Informatics (IJMI) and Methods of Information in Medicine (MIM). All publications of the years 2004 and 2005 from these journals were indexed according to a given list of model types. Random samples out of these publications were analysed in more depth. Results Three hundred and eighty-four publications have been analysed, 190 of IJMI and 194 of MIM. For publications in special issues (121 in IJMI) and special topics (132 in MIM) we found differences between theme-centered and conference-centered special issues/special topics (SIT) publications. In particular, we could observe a high variation between modeling in publications of theme-centered SITs. It became obvious that often sound formal knowledge as well as a strong engineering background is needed for carrying out this type of research. Usually, this knowledge and the related skills can be best provided in consecutive B.Sc. and M.Sc. programs in medical informatics (respectively, health informatics, biomedical informatics). If the focus should be primarily on health information systems and evaluation this can be offered in a M.Sc. program in medical informatics. Conclusions In analysing the 384 publications it became obvious that modeling continues to be a major task in research, education and practice in biomedical and health informatics. Knowledge and skills on a broad range of model types are needed in biomedical/health informatics.

The Stanford Biomedical Informatics training program began with a focus on clinical informatics, and has now evolved into a general program of biomedical informatics training, including clinical informatics, bioinformatics and imaging informatics. The program offers PhD, MS, distance MS, certificate programs, and is now affiliated with an undergraduate major in biomedical computation. Current dynamics include (1) increased activity in informatics within other training programs in biology and the information sciences (2) increased desire among informatics students to gain laboratory experience, (3) increased demand for computational collaboration among biomedical researchers, and (4) interaction with the newly formed Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. The core focus on research training-the development and application of novel informatics methods for biomedical research-keeps the program centered in the midst of this period of growth and diversification.

Several training programs in biomedical informatics in the United States are attempting to integrate biological and clinical informatics. However, significant differences in the cultures underlying these two disciplines pose barriers to a uniform educational solution. This paper recounts the experience at Columbia University in adapting a graduate program with an initial focus on clinical informatics to train bioinformaticians. The analysis begins by considering the development of the medical and biological informatics cultures over a 17-year period. Then we review how two separate curricula evolved to serve the needs of each group. Interviews with bioinformatics students and faculty indicated some dissatisfaction with the curriculum that developed within clinical informatics. Their comments are considered in the light of an analysis of the relationship between the application domains of biomedical informatics as a discipline. In response, a new curriculum was developed in which bioinformatics and clinical informatics are regarded as subdivisions of the same subject. A key feature of this curriculum is a new course, Theory and Methods in Biomedical Informatics, which presents informatics principles in their general form, and illustrates their application with examples drawn from across the biomedical spectrum. The paper concludes with suggestions for integrating informatics training programs at other institutions.

International audience; This paper reports on an analysis of the bioinformatics and medical informatics literature with the objective to identify upcoming trends that are shared among both research fields to derive benefits from potential collaborative initiatives for their future. Our results present the main characteristics of the two fields and show that these domains are still relatively separated.

Summary Objectives: The growing use of health information technology in operational settings, along with the maturation of the discipline of biomedical informatics, requires reorganization of educational programs in the field. The objective of this paper is to provide a context and description of the biomedical informatics education program at Oregon Health & Science University. Methods: The details of the program are provided. Results: The paper describes the overall program and its component curricula. Conclusions: OHSU has developed a program that caters to the full spectrum of those who will work in the field, allowing education tailored to their career goals and needs. The maturation of Internet technologies also allow most aspects of the program to be delivered on-line. The informatics field must step up to the challenge of educating the best workforce to achieve our goals for the optimal use of HIT.

In recent years, the introduction of data analytics to large amounts of healthcare data collected on daily basis opened numerous new opportunities and challenges in the field of medical informatics. By definition, healthcare informatics refers to the process of leveraging information technologies to improve the quality of healthcare. Many researchers are focusing on basic and translational research to achieve this goal by proposing novel or applying and adapting the state-of-the-art data analytics techniques to vast amounts of recently collected data. Recent adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHR) opens additional opportunities for data analytics, as we are able to access structured and unstructured data that is systematically collected for each event in the healthcare system or even contributed by the patients themselves. This tutorial covers different data analytics techniques and their translational value in improving the quality of healthcare. In the introductory part of the tutorial, we will outline the basics of data analytics in healthcare and continue with description of data representation that is specific to this field. The second part of the tutorial will present concrete state-of-the-art approaches that can be applied in healthcare informatics. Participants will gain a better understanding of risk estimation and stratification, patient similarity, privacy-preserving predictive modelling and patient-based classification. All methods presented in the tutorial have great translational value and can be implemented as a stand-alone solution or a part of health information systems. The intended audience of this tutorial are healthcare professionals and researchers from all fields of healthcare informatics. No specific knowledge will be required since the tutorial is self-contained and most fundamental concepts will be introduced during the presentation.

The recent announcement of the Precision Medicine Initiative by President Obama has brought precision medicine (PM) to the forefront for healthcare providers, researchers, regulators, innovators, and funders alike. As technologies continue to evolve and datasets grow in magnitude, a strong computational infrastructure will be essential to realize PM’s vision of improved healthcare derived from personal data. In addition, informatics research and innovation affords a tremendous opportunity to drive the science underlying PM. The informatics community must lead the development of technologies and methodologies that will increase the discovery and application of biomedical knowledge through close collaboration between researchers, clinicians, and patients. This perspective highlights seven key areas that are in need of further informatics research and innovation to support the realization of PM.