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Biomedical Data: Their Acquisition, Storage, and Use

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Biomedical Informatics

Abstract

This chapter provides fundamental background about the nature of clinical data and decision making, which will be required for understanding the field of biomedical informatics. It describes various types of clinical data, how clinical data are collected and used by medical professionals, and how they support medical practice and clinical research. It also discusses the rationale behind the transition from paper records to electronic health records (EHRs) for representing clinical data. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the relationship between concepts of data, information, and knowledge, and by introducing concepts relevant to medical decision-making such as sensitivity, specificity, and Bayes’ theorem.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note that it was the tendency to record such dates in computers as “14FEB12” that led to the end-of-century complexities that were called the Year 2K problem. It was shortsighted to think that it was adequate to encode the year of an event with only two digits.

  2. 2.

    Big Data Senior Steering Group. The Federal Big Data Research and Development Strategic Plan. Available at: 7 https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/NSTC/bigdatardstrategicplan-nitrd_final-051916.pdf (Accessed 6/28/2019).

  3. 3.

    7 http://www.icd10data.com/ (Accessed 11/1/2019).

  4. 4.

    7 http://snomed.org/ (Accessed 5/6/2019).

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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

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

Editor information

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 Data: Their Acquisition, Storage, and Use. In: Shortliffe, E.H., Cimino, J.J. (eds) Biomedical Informatics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58721-5_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58721-5_2

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-58720-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-58721-5

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