2025
Overview
Health care informatics is the interdisciplinary field that applies information science, computing, and data management to the collection, storage, retrieval, and analysis of health data in order to improve clinical decision-making and the delivery of patient care. It combines elements of computer science, information technology, statistics, and health sciences to turn raw clinical, administrative, and biomedical data into actionable knowledge that supports diagnosis, treatment planning, public health surveillance, and health system management. Core concerns of the field include the standardization and codification of clinical concepts, the design of electronic health records, the secure exchange and privacy protection of patient information, and the development of decision-support tools that help clinicians act on evidence at the point of care. A recurring theme in the discipline is the need for consistent, well-defined data standards: for example, work in this area has examined the importance of standardizing and codifying adverse drug event definitions, documentation, and mapping, alongside more refined medication definitions, so that safety information can be reliably captured, shared, and analyzed across systems. By improving how health data is structured and interpreted, health care informatics aims to reduce error, support research, and strengthen the quality and efficiency of care.
Research published in this journal
1 peer-reviewed article, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.