BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS

Welcome to the Biohealthmatics.com Knowledge Center. This section is for those who are looking for a gentle introduction to biomedical informatics and some of its various components.

Biomedical informatics is an emerging discipline underlying the acquisition, maintenance, retrieval and application of knowledge and information in research, education, and service in health-related basic sciences, clinical disciplines, and health care administration with computer science, statistics, engineering, mathematics, information technologies and management.^{1 2}

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Biomedical informatics also provides the tools and skills needed for the development and application of new technology for improving patient care, medical education, health sciences and management for healthcare/hospital systems.

Biomedical informatics coalesces the related fields of Medical Informatics (now being named Health Informatics) and Bioinformatics. Health Informatics contains subsets such as Telemedicine, Clinical Informatics, and Dental Informatics, Pharmaceutical Informatics, Nursing Informatics and Public Health Informatics.

Central to both medical informatics and bioinformatics is the collection and analysis of information. While medical informatics is more concerned with structures and algorithms for the manipulation of the data and how it can be applied in healthcare, bioinformatics is more concerned with the data itself and its biological implications.³

References

1. Friedman, Charles. Medical Informatics: Challenges and Opportunities. Center for Biomedical Informatics: Introductory Lecture Series. 1996

2. Vanderbilt University. [WWW] What is biomedical informatics? http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/dbmi/informatics.html (19^TH March 2003)

3. Bioinformatics Institute of India. [WWW] What is bioinformatics? http://www.bioinformaticscentre.org/page/faq.asp (19^TH March 2003)

• Medical Informatics FAQ
  Aamir Zakaria, M.D. answers some frequently asked questions about Medical Informatics and the sci.med.informatics newsgroup.
  http://www.faqs.org/faqs/medical-informatics-faq/

• The Interactions Between Clinical Informatics and Bioinformatics: A Case Study.
  An article by R. Altman in The Journal of American Medical Informatics Association.
  http://www-smi.stanford.edu/pubs/SMI_Reports/SMI-2000-0854.pdf

• What is biomedical informatics?
  Definition of biomedical informatics from the University of Washington website.
  http://faculty.washington.edu/gennari/MedicalInformaticsDef.html

• Biomedical Informatics
  Biomedical informatics program from DeVry University.
  http://www.devry.edu/programs/biomedical_informatics/about.jsp

• Graduate Programs in Biomedical Informatics
  Article about what biomedical informatics graduate training program entails from the University of Medcine and Dentistry of New Jersy. http://www.umdnj.edu/shrp/about.html

• Informatics Network
  Project co-ordinated by the University of Leeds, to bridge informatics teaching and research across a diverse, multi-disciplinary range of academic groups.
  http://www.informatics.leeds.ac.uk/

• Biotechnology Calendar
  Calendar of pharma and biotech conferences and meetings, Updated weekly with over 18,000 events listed since 1995.
  FEED: http://www.cato.com/fyi/calendarRss10.rdf

• Biotechnology Directory
  Categorized links to over 3000 pharma and biotech related sites since 1995.
  FEED: http://www.cato.com/biotech/directoryRss10.rdf