A vocabulary for medical informatics

The terminology in medical informatics is evolving rapidly. The organizers of MEDINFO and SCAMC have used different sets of keywords to index their documents. Recognizing the limitations of this approach, members of those organizations joined with the National Library of Medicine in the creation of a better terminology for medical informatics. A hierarchical structure was placed on the terms to produce a thesaurus typical of the sort often used in the indexing and retrieving of documents. The building of this thesaurus began with an automatic merging of the thesaurus used by the Association of Computing Machinery and the Information Sciences component of the "Medical Subject Headings." This product was pruned by eliminating terms not related to those in the MEDINFO keyword list or not in the medical informatics literature. Further refinement of the thesaurus resulted from extensive discussions among the authors of this paper. The first major application of this terminology has been to the indexing of the articles in "MEDINFO-86 Proceedings." Major components of this medical informatics thesaurus also have been incorporated into the "Medical Subject Headings." This paper describes the process of preparing the thesaurus and presents an evaluation of its coverage of the "MEDINFO-86 Proceedings."     

Training in medical informatics

A course is described for the training of medical students in medical informatics (other terms: computational medicine, medical computing). The philosophy behind the course is that there are several modes or levels of human interaction in working with computers, running from registrative functions to assistance at diagnosis and therapy. The course, which consists of five full days, contains lessons in the areas of medical data bases, hospital information systems, medical records, biological signal analysis, computer-assisted diagnosis making, and patient simulation by CAI. Each group of two students has a terminal available, connected to a mini- and/or a microcomputer. The microprocessor takes care of signal analysis and the minicomputer is available for data base construction and interactive operations. The article describes the purposes and contents of all different lessons of this course.     

Ten years of medical informatics. Introduction

The discussions of the Tenth Anniversary of the Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care (SCAMC) are summarized. Eight different subject areas are addressed: Medical informatics and medical education; Decision making, medical artificial intelligence, modelling and simulations; Image processing, 3-D graphics, and computer networks; Reimbursement policy, legal and regulatory issues; Encoding and representation of medical meaning; Ambulatory medical records systems; Hospital information systems; and Software environments for developing medical information systems. The activities of the 10th SCAMC consisted of Tutorials, Panel Discussions, a Plenary Session, Scientific Demonstrations, and an International Student Paper Competition in Medical Informatics.     

The European Community: standardization in medical informatics and imaging.

The use of informatics and telecommunications in health care and medicine has reached a stage where the application of standards is an absolute requirement. The AIM Programme of the CEC DGXIII stimulated the study of the subject, and has supported the set up of an official European platform for standardization in this field, the CEN TC251. The needs for standardization in one of the subareas, medical imaging, are described in detail. The future solutions of the problems concerned are regarded prerequisites for the general and practical use of PACS and IMACS.     

Evolution of medical informatics societies in the United States

Medical informatics, the application of computers to medicine, was supported by engineering groups in the 1950s, by biomedical engineering societies in the 1960s, and by medical informatics organizations in the 1970s and 1980s. Because of the highly specialized and technical nature of medical informatics, the dissemination of early articles on the subject was largely dependent on publication of the proceedings and transactions of meetings of professional organizations. The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) was recently formed from the merger of three professional organizations, each dedicated to medical informatics: the American Association for Medical systems and Informatics (AAMSI), the American College for Medical Informatics (ACMI), and the Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care (SCAMC). An increase in professional interest and activity in medical informatics is anticipated in the 1990s.