Product Description

This brilliant guide to medical informatics is an easy to read overview of the basic concepts of information and communication technologies in healthcare. Not only does the book cover the complexities and implications of the increasing use of information technology in healthcare, but it also explores the basic principles of informatics that govern clinical decisions and behaviour.

The 2nd edition of 'A Guide to Health Informatics' is particularly of interest for clinical health professionals and medical/health science students. As before, the emphasis throughout the book is clinically relevant. New to this restructured and updated edition is a section on searching for, structuring and using information, new material on evidence-based medicine and discussion of the internet and patient use. Key areas such as the Internet, the Web and healthcare have been updated to reflect current issues. (20040516)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #380028 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 472 pages

Review
This is an excellent academic review of all aspects of information technology that are applied to healthcare and is not a book for techies. (Medix Website )

A simply brilliant introduction to this fast developing field which is comprehensive, up-to-date, and at the same time sophisticated... It should be read by all healthcare professionals. (2004 BMA Medical Book Competition (awarded a Highl )

I feel this book will give students who work in Health a good academic background to Health Informatics. I will recommend that they do purchase it if they intend to complete the degree programme. I have also recommended this book to be included in the reading list for the NHS Professional Awards. (Jean Gilbert, Lecturer at the University of Derby )

From the Author
The Guide to Health Informatics has been written for healthcare professionals who wish to understand the principles and applications of information and communication systems in healthcare.The text is presented in a way that should make it accessible to anyone, independent of their knowledge of technology. It should be suitable as a textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate training in the clinical aspects of informatics, and as an introductory textbook for those undertaking a postgraduate career in informatics.

With the second edition of the Guide I have kept the essential backbone of the informatics story the same. We start with foundational chapters explain simply the abstract concepts that are core to informatics and subsequent chapters are built upon those foundations. Every chapter has been updated and many have been almost completely rewritten to reflect the emergence of new ideas and results, producing a text approximately twice the length of the original.

Each chapter now ends with a new element - questions intended to test the reader’s understanding of the chapter or stimulate discussion of the material.

A new set of chapters on clinical informatics skills forms Part Two of this book and represents the major new element in the 2nd Edition. I remain deeply conscious that practising clinicians need to translate knowledge into action, and in Part Two I have attempted to identify those clinical activities that are essentially informatic – communicating, structuring information, asking questions, searching for answers, and making decisions. Informatics is as much about doing as it is about the tools we use in the doing, and I hope these new chapters will, once and for all, establish to clinicians why the study of health informatics is the foundation of all other clinical activities.

Several new specialist chapters appear at the end of the book on Bioinformatics and Biosurveillance for bioterror agents, and represent areas where there has been a significant surge in research and development activity since the book was first written in 1996.

About the Author
Enrico Coiera
Professor and Foundation Chair of Medical Informatics
University of New South Wales, Australia (20050225)