HEALTH INFORMATICS

By: John Vincent Manlagñit

BSN – 2A
 W H AT I S H E A LT H I N F O R M AT I C S ?

- Health informatics addresses the study and management of healthcare

information. Health informatics would be the largest encompassing circle
surrounding smaller intersecting circles. These aspects include specific content
areas such as information retrieval, ethics, security, decision support, patient
care, system life cycle, evaluation, human-computer interaction (HCI),
standards, telehealth, healthcare information systems, imaging, knowledge,
representation, electronic health records (EHRs), education and information
retrieval.
Workers in the field of Health Informatics organize and analyze health
records to improve healthcare outcomes. Those workers also develop
methods to gather, analyze and implement patient solutions using existing
resources and devices. They must store and retrieve all applicable
information regarding patients, treatments, and all eventual outcomes.
They build communications protocols within the systems of the facilities
where they work. They ensure that doctors, nurses, and other
professionals have quick, easy and efficient access to medical records.
The field is growing rapidly and it has already 4 sub disciplines. Medical
informatics, Nursing informatics, Pharmacy informatics and Dental
informatics.
 Medical
Informatics

Pharmacy Nursing
informatics
Health
Informatics
Informatics

Dental
Informatics
 4 S U B D I S C I P L I N E S O F H E A LT H I N F O R M AT I C S

1. Medical informatics – is the sub-discipline of health informatics that directly impacts the
patients – physician relationship. It focuses on the information technology that enables
the effective collection of data using technology tools to develop medical knowledge and
to facilitate the delivery of patient medical care. The goal of medical informatics is to
ensure access to critical patient medical information at the precise time and place it is
needed to make medical decisions.

2. Nursing informatics – is the sub-discipline of health informatics that integrates nursing

science with multiple information management and analytical sciences to identify,
define, manage and communicate data, information, knowledge and wisdom in nursing
practice. It supports consumers, patients, nurses, and other healthcare professionals in
their decision-making in all roles and settings to achieve desired outcomes.
3. Pharmacy informatics – is the sub-discipline of health informatics which is defined
by HIMSS as “the scientific field that focuses on medication-related data and
knowledge within the continuum of healthcare systems including its acquisition,
storage, analysis, use and dissemination in the delivery of optimal medication-
related patient care and health outcomes.
4. Dental informatics – is the sub-discipline of health informatics and a multi-
disciplinary field that seeks to improve health care through the application of
Health Information Technology (HIT) and information science to health care
delivery, health information management, health care administration, research,
information gathering and synthesis and knowledge sharing. Dental informatics is
concerned with the intersection of Health Informatics and Dentistry as a whole.
THANK YOU!