Health Informatics

Health Informatics (HI) is the academic field or profession of 1) applying computers to medicine and 2) studying and developing theories of information, knowledge and thought processes of the practitioner-users, that is the cognitive science and cognitive engineering of physicians, nurses and all users of these information devices.

HI is deeply rooted in translational science, a cross-disciplinary practice of analyzing datasets derived from clinic records and clinical research data and translating the results into future decision-making in many health-related disciplines, including clinical practice, clinical research, computer science and engineering, human-computer interaction (HCI), cognitive science, psychology and others.

HI covers a spectrum from applications (getting something to work) to theory (studying how it works or why it doesn't).

There are many special interests within HI which match up with the many particular specialties in medicine, such as nursing, radiology, imaging, laboratory medicine (pathology) as well as emergency medicine.