Medical Informatics

Abstract

The topic for this paper is an overview of medical informatics in the United States, what it is, how it is used in patient care, and what role librarians play in it. Medical informatics, a term first coined in Europe in the early 1970's, encompasses the disciplines of computer science and medicine. Medical informatics is a relatively new field, with its beginning in the 1950's. The first scholarly papers written in the field that was to become medical informatics are found in the literature of the engineering society, Professional Group in Bio-Medical Electronics of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE). This group published papers on the term "biomedical computing" in its annual conference proceedings known as the IRE Transactions on Medical Electronics. Although the definition of medical informatics may be stated as applying the power of computers to the medical field, there are many variant definitions to be found in the literature.