Health informatics (also called
health care informatics,
healthcare informatics,
medical informatics,
nursing informatics,
clinical informatics, or
biomedical informatics) is
informatics in
health care. It is a
multidisciplinary field that uses
health information technology (HIT) to improve health care via any combination of higher quality, higher efficiency (spurring lower cost and thus greater availability), and new opportunities. The disciplines involved include
information science,
computer science,
social science,
behavioral science,
management science, and others. The
NLM defines health informatics as "the interdisciplinary study of the design, development, adoption and application of IT-based innovations in healthcare services delivery, management and planning." It deals with the resources, devices, and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information in health and biomedicine.
Health informatics tools include amongst others computers,
clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, and information and communication systems. It is applied to the areas of
nursing,
clinical care,
dentistry,
pharmacy,
public health,
occupational therapy,
physical therapy and (
bio)
medical research, and
alternative medicine.