The Creation of a New Discipline

Abstract

The increasingly complex informatics technology that evolved since 1950 created a new domain of knowledge and a new professional discipline. In this chapter we discuss the foundations and evolution of the fi eld of medical informatics, focusing on the role of publications, professional organizations, government, and industry in promoting the fi eld's growth, success, and impact. The earliest reports on biomedical applications of computers began to appear at conferences sponsored by professional engineering societies as early as 1947. The English term, medical informatics , was successfully introduced at an international meeting held in 1974. Subsequently the range of topics and the fi eld's scientifi c base have broadened, while academic informatics programs have been established at a growing number of institutions. The number of informatics articles published annually has grown rapidly, as have peer-reviewed informatics journals, the fi rst two of which were launched in the 1960s. The fi rst comprehensive medical informatics textbook (published in 1990) is now in its fourth edition. Starting in the 1960s, multiple organizations have been formed to focus on medical informatics; as their activities and infl uence increased, mergers followed, ultimately resulting in the creation of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) in 1988. Other key players have included nursing, industry, academia, and the federal government, especially through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). More recently the fi eld has been further nurtured at the federal level by the Offi ce of the National Coordinator (ONC), which has championed the diffusion of electronic medical records, and the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS), which has funded clinical translational science awards and their supporting information systems.

History and application of artificial neural networks in dentistry

“…The affinity between AI and the medical field was established in the early 1970s with the launch of the Stanford University Medical Experimental Computer System for AI in Medicine project, as well as the initial expert systems MYCIN, INTERNIST, CASNET, and so on. [ 38 ] Since the initiation of the “democratization” of the Internet in 1991, global biomedical network infrastructures have been formed beyond the national level, and there has been a breakthrough in the development of AI in the medical sector. [ 39 ]…”

Medical Informatics in Indonesia: Importance, Development, and Future Directions

“…Also known as Health Informatics, MI consist of different kinds of fields, namely Computer Science or Informatics, Decision Science, Statistics, Medical Science, etc. [1].…”

“…Also known as Health Informatics, MI consist of different kinds of fields, namely Computer Science or Informatics, Decision Science, Statistics, Medical Science, etc. [1]. However, the three most prominent fields in MI are Information Systems (IS), Computer Science (CS), and Health or Medical Science (HS).…”

“…Other researchers have adopted the terms and definition given by AMIA, such as Sweeney [3], Valenta et al [4], and Cummings et al [5]. Meanwhile, the others prefer to use the medical informatics term as can be found in the works of Mihalas et al [6], Collen and Shortliffe [1], and Wyatt and Liu [7]. Here, throughout this paper we used the latter term, i.e., the Medical Informatics (MI).…”

The golden era of biomedical informatics has begun

“…The discipline is inclusive of areas such as bioinformatics and computational biology, clinical informatics, clinical research informatics, consumer health informatics, and public health informatics. The history of the discipline as it relates to healthcare in the United States has been described in great detail in the recent book edited by Collen and Ball [2]. …”