Focusing on Medical Informatics

Indivisibility and Variety of Medical Informatics

“…In recent editorials [14,17] it has been pointed out that medical informatics, seen as comprehensive health care informatics, should be understood as the science of information processing and engineering of automated information systems within the health care system [14]. Since the health care system as a whole is the object system of medical informatics, its object of cognition will have to be seen in computerized medical information systems or information systems as components of socio-technical and biological object systems [17].…”

“…information processes with their elements [6] or base and information systems [14], the principles and possibilities of information systems analysis as well as planning and application design in an ontological perspective [20], the morphology of medical computerized information systems (component of application, technical component, social component) including the qualities of their elements [14], the methodological concepts (algorithms) of automation of special information processes such as, for example, image processing, pattern recognition, (bio-)signal analysis, coding, classification, process control and systems regulation, problem solving/decision-making, modeling and simulating, data presentation, information storage and retrieval, communication and registration [6,19] as well as medical methodology demanded by Reichertz [12], the management of the engineering process [16] and the milieu of the medical information scientist, detailed by Evans [6]. In summary, the proposed taxonomy of medical informatics differentiates between general medical informatics and a set of application specific subspecialty areas or, in other words, between the theory of engineering computerized medical information systems and the practical application of these methodological con~ cepts focusing on special parts or processes of its object system.…”