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Biomedical Informatics: The Science and the Pragmatics

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Biomedical Informatics

Abstract

This chapter introduces the field of biomedical informatics, explaining that it addresses underlying scientific issues (basic research) while also having major applied goals and an opportunity to transform life science research, health, and health care in positive ways. It acknowledges that the full potential of the field has not yet been realized and points to some issues that remain for the discipline to address in the future. It also emphasizes the interplay between informatics and a wide variety of economic and social issues that characterize modern health care.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, is now known as the National Academy of Medicine.

  2. 2.

    7 https://ehrintelligence.com/news/top-clinical-decision-support-system-cdss-companies-by-ambulatory-inpatient; 7 https://www.ibm.com/watson/health/. (Accessed 5/29/19/).

  3. 3.

    This section is adapted from a discussion that originally appeared in (Shortliffe and Sondik 2004).

  4. 4.

    7 https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/4/18293817/cybersecurity-hospitals-health-care-scan-simulation (Accessed 5/29/19).

  5. 5.

    7 https://nam.edu/programs/value-science-driven-health-care/learning-health-system-series/ (Accessed 05/29/19)

  6. 6.

    7 https://medicine.umich.edu/dept/learning-health-sciences (Accessed 05/03/2020)

  7. 7.

    7 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/23796146 (Accessed 05/03/2020)

  8. 8.

    7 https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/policy-value-based-care/staffing-professional-development/news/13024360/report-health-informatics-labor-market-lags-behind-demand-for-workers (Accessed 5/30/2019); 7 https://www.bestvalueschools.com/faq/job-outlook-health-informatics-graduates/ (Accessed 5/30/2019).

  9. 9.

    7 https://www.burning-glass.com/wp-content/uploads/BG-Health_Informatics_2014.pdf (Accessed 5/30/2019).

  10. 10.

    A directory of some existing training programs is available at 7 http://www.amia.org/education/programs-and-courses (Accessed 5/30/19).

  11. 11.

    7 https://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml (Accessed 5/31/2019).

  12. 12.

    Available at 7 https://acd.od.nih.gov/documents/reports/060399_Biomed_Computing_WG_RPT.htm (Accessed 5/31/2019).

  13. 13.

    See 7 http://www.bisti.nih.gov/. (Accessed 5/31/2019).

  14. 14.

    7 http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-biomedical-informatics (Accessed 5/30/19).

  15. 15.

    7 https://www.amia.org/about-amia/science-informatics (Accessed 5//27/19).

  16. 16.

    The latter system was later taken over and further developed by the Technicon Corporation (subsequently TDS Healthcare Systems Corporation). Later the system was part of the suite of products available from Eclipsys, Inc. (which in turn was acquired by Allscripts, Inc in 2010).

  17. 17.

    7 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080112083626.htm; 7 https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/08/are-processors-pushing-up-against-the-limits-of-physics/ (Accessed 5/27/19).

  18. 18.

    Clinical informatics was approved in 2013 by the American Board of Medical Specialties as a formal subspecialty of medicine (Finnell and Dixon, 2015), with board certification examinations offered for eligible candidates by the American Board of Preventive Medicine (7 https://www.theabpm.org/become-certified/subspecialties/clinical-informatics/ (Accessed 6/1/19)). AMIA is formulating a similar certification program, AMIA Health Informatics Certification (AHIC) for non-physicians who are working in the clinical informatics area (7 https://www.amia.org/ahic, Accessed 1/5/2020).

  19. 19.

    7 https://www.amia.org/COVID19 (Accessed 05/03/2020)

  20. 20.

    See also the diagram in (Kulikowski et al. 2012), which shows how these two disciplines span all areas of applied biomedical informatics.

  21. 21.

    7 https://ncats.nih.gov/ctsa (Accessed 6/2/2019).

  22. 22.

    7 https://www.amia.org/meetings-and-events (Accessed 6/2/2019)

  23. 23.

    Many current biomedical informatics training programs were designed with this perspective in mind. Students with interests in clinical, imaging, public health, and biologic applications are often trained together and are required to learn something about each of the other application areas, even while specializing in one subarea for their own research. Several such programs were described in a series of articles in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics in 2007 (Tarczy-Hornoch et al. 2007) and many more have been added since that time.

  24. 24.

    Many interesting problems cannot be computed in a reasonable time and require heuristics. Computability theory is the foundation for assessing the feasibility and cost of computation to provide the complete and correct results to a formally stated problem.

  25. 25.

    In fact, the multidisciplinary nature of biomedical informatics has led the informatics term to be borrowed in other disciplines, including computer science organizations, even though the English name for the field was first adopted in the biomedical context. Today we even have generic full departments of informatics in the US (e.g., see 7 https://informatics.njit.edu, Accessed 11/28/2020) and in other parts of the world as well (e.g., 7 http://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/. Accessed 1/5/2020). In the US, there are full schools with informatics in their title (e.g., 7 https://luddy.indiana.edu/index.html. Accessed 1/5/2020) and even a School of Biomedical Informatics (7 https://sbmi.uth.edu/. Accessed 1/2/2020).

  26. 26.

    By the late 1960s the first BME departments were formed in the US at the University of Virginia, Case Western Reserve University, Johns Hopkins University, and Duke University (see 7 https://navigate.aimbe.org/why-bioengineering/history/, Accessed 6/2/2019). Duke’s undergraduate degree program in BMI was the first to be accredited by the Engineering Council for Professional Development (September 1972).

  27. 27.

    Technological progress in this area is occurring at a dizzying rate. Consider, for example, the announcement that scientists are advancing the notion of using DNA for data storage and can store as much as 704 terabytes of information in a gram of DNA. 7 http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/19/harvard-stores-704tb-in-a-gram-of-dna; 7 https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~bornholt/dnastorage-asplos16/ (Accessed 5/30/19).

  28. 28.

    The Institute of Medicine (IOM), part of the former National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was reorganized in 2015 to become the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). The NAS is now known as the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Edward H. Shortliffe

  2. Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

    Edward H. Shortliffe

  3. Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA

    Edward H. Shortliffe

  4. National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Michael F. Chiang

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  1. Edward H. Shortliffe
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  2. Michael F. Chiang
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Correspondence to Edward H. Shortliffe .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Edward H. Shortliffe

  2. Informatics Institute, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    James J. Cimino

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Shortliffe, E.H., Chiang, M.F. (2021). Biomedical Informatics: The Science and the Pragmatics. In: Shortliffe, E.H., Cimino, J.J. (eds) Biomedical Informatics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58721-5_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58721-5_1

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