Health-care informatics (HCI) is a rapidly growing branch of the massive health-care industry. HCI represents a marriage of information technology (IT) and health care and uses the many new tools made available through the IT revolution to store and retrieve sensitive health-related information. Even more significantly, health care informatics is pioneering new information services and systems that are tailor-made to meet specific information-handling needs within the industry. Health care information includes patient records, the privacy of which must be zealously guarded; medication orders; diagnostic data; and overall treatment-outcome statistics.
A Growing Field of Study
HCI has emerged as an increasingly popular field of study in recent years, with courses being offered at both technical schools and by four-year colleges that have degree programs in computer-information systems. Montana Tech, located in Butte, Montana, was one of the first schools to offer a bachelor of science degree in health-care informatics. The school, which graduated its first students in this program in 2005, defines HCI as "the study of the best ways to acquire, implement and use data and information systems to support health care providers and the delivery of health care."
The Need Is Great
With demands on the health-care system growing by leaps and bounds, the need to find better ways of moving the massive amount of health-related data quickly, efficiently and securely has grown as well. HCI professionals are adapting existing information- management technology to help handle this data and are also seeking to develop brand-new systems that will improve on the tools currently available.
An Extension of Telemedicine
HCI is a logical extension of earlier attempts to harness existing information and electronics technology to help better address the health care needs of Americans. As far back as the 1960s, doctors and other health professionals sought to provide treatment over telephone lines to patients in remote locations. In the intervening years the explosion of information-management technology has provided a whole arsenal of new tools to collect, store and distribute health-related data and to provide medical professionals with computerized tools to treat their patients.
Security Concerns
As concerns about patient privacy and medical ethics have grown, so too has the pressure on HCI researchers to develop truly secure modes of handling sensitive health-care data. They face the daunting task of creating systems that can quickly move massive amounts of health-related information from one point to another and still resist outside attempts by hackers and others to gain illegal access to this data.
Global Standardization
For the ultimate goals of HCI to be realized, it will be necessary to develop and adopt international standards for the digital transmission of medical data from one corner of the world to another. This is unlikely to happen unless HCI professionals everywhere forge international alliances that will facilitate such cooperation and standardization, offering yet another challenge to those entering this relatively new field of study.
Tags: health care, systems that, health-related data, health-related information, technology help
