Biomedical Informatics: The Science and the Pragmatics

E.H. Shortliffe, J.J. Cimino (eds.), Biomedical Informatics, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-4474-8_1, © Springer-Verlag London 2014 After reading this chapter, you should know the answers to these questions: • Why is information and knowledge management a central issue in biomedical research and clinical practice? • What are integrated information management environments, and how might we expect them to affect the practice of medicine, the promotion of health, and biomedical research in coming years? • What do we mean by the terms biomedical informatics , medical computer science , medical computing , clinical informatics , nursing informatics , bioinformatics , public health informatics , and health informatics ? • Why should health professionals, life scientists, and students of the health professions learn about biomedical informatics concepts and informatics applications? • How has the development of modern computing technologies and the Internet changed the nature of biomedical computing? • How is biomedical informatics related to clinical practice, public health, biomedical engineering, molecular biology, decision science, information science, and computer science? • How does information in clinical medicine and health differ from information in the basic sciences? • How can changes in computer technology and the way patient care is fi nanced infl uence the integration of biomedical computing into clinical practice?