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Branches of Health Informatics

1. Clinical Informatics: Clinical informatics is a subfield of medical informatics that focuses on the use of computer applications to handle medical data, such as collection, analysis, and representation. It combines information science, computer science, and clinical science to support the management and processing of data, information, and knowledge, ultimately aiding the practice and delivery of clinical care (Shortliffe & Perreault, Medical Informatics: Computing Applications in Healthcare and Biomedicine).

Key areas within clinical informatics include:

• Medical Data Mining
• Electronic Medical Records (EMRs)
• Decision Support Systems
• Hospital Information Systems

2. Nursing Informatics: Nursing informatics is a specialized branch of healthcare informatics that supports nursing activities through information systems. These systems assist with patient care, documentation, administration, and disease prevention. The most widely accepted definition, provided by the International Medical Informatics Association in 1998, describes nursing informatics as the integration of nursing science, information management, and communication technology to promote global health.

The American Nurses Association (2006) further defines it as a specialty that merges nursing, computer, and information science to manage and communicate nursing data, information, and knowledge. It helps improve patient care, education, administration, and research through the use of technology.

3. Consumer Health Informatics: Consumer health informatics (CHI) is a newer field focusing on understanding and meeting consumers' information needs. It aims to provide patients and healthy individuals with tools, skills, and resources to make informed health decisions. According to Gunther Eysenbach (2000), CHI studies how consumers can access and use health information, integrating their preferences into medical information systems.

CHI examples include self-care websites, online disease management tools, telemedicine, personal health records (PHRs), and online support groups. Healthcare providers increasingly use these tools to empower patients to manage aspects of their care.

4. Public Health Informatics: Public health informatics applies information and computer science to public health practice, research, and education. Unlike clinical informatics, which focuses on individuals, public health informatics deals with population-level data. It involves the collection, storage, and analysis of data for public health activities, addressing issues that affect community health.

5. Dental Informatics: Dental informatics applies information and computer science to improve dental care, education, research, and administration. Over the past few decades, it has become an essential research discipline and is considered a subset of medical and biomedical informatics. This field supports advancements in electronic health records, digital imaging, CAD/CAM technology, and administrative data for all aspects of dental practice.

6. Clinical Research Informatics: Clinical research informatics (CRI) focuses on applying informatics to improve the design, conduct, and outcomes of clinical research. It often overlaps with translational research informatics and helps streamline studies in human subjects. CRI is essential for patient-oriented research, epidemiologic and behavioral studies, and health services research, contributing to innovations in therapeutic interventions, clinical trials, and new technologies.

7. Bioinformatics: Bioinformatics combines applied mathematics, computer science, artificial intelligence, chemistry, and biochemistry to solve molecular-level biological problems. This rapidly evolving field includes areas such as sequence alignment, genome assembly, protein structure prediction, and modeling of gene expression. Bioinformatics is closely linked to systems biology and is key to understanding complex biological systems.

8. Veterinary Informatics: Veterinary informatics applies information technology to veterinary healthcare, encompassing electronic medical records, decision support systems, and standards for data exchange, such as HL7. It also includes the use of controlled medical vocabularies like SNOMED-CT and LOINC for standardized data sharing. Veterinary informatics helps enhance care, streamline administrative tasks, and integrate medical decision-making in animal healthcare.

9. Pharmacy Informatics: Pharmacy informatics (PIX), also known as pharmacoinformatics, deals with the use of computers to manage drug-related information, including patient medical records, drug interactions, and prescriptions. PIX plays a crucial role in pharmaceutical care, enhancing patient safety and improving overall healthcare delivery through efficient information management.

Additionally, Imaging Informatics is another branch of health informatics that focuses on the use of information technology to improve imaging processes and management in healthcare.