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Healthcare Informatics is often defined as the application
of information technology in the health and healthcare domain. No
longer the exclusive province of academia, healthcare informatics is now
increasingly applied to improving health outcomes for individuals and
populations, and solving real problems in care delivery, case and
population management, and healthcare business.
Much of healthcare
informatics now involves the design and development of information systems
used in care delivery and management, healthcare administration and
financing, and the supporting education, research and industry segments
of the healthcare domain. A growing body of experience shows that
these systems are most effectively, efficiently, and economically developed
when these are:
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directly linked to
the organization's business, care delivery mission, or clinical
functions,
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comply with
standards and industry best practices,
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use a model-driven
architecture and development process, and
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employ a formal life
cycle management methodology.
The how's, when's
and why's of architecture and modeling are as key and essential to the
development of modern healthcare information systems as traditional
considerations like life cycle management. With the increasing
complexity and scope of enterprise transactional systems, electronic
health records and clinical repositories, and analytical systems such as
clinical data warehouses, information architecture and modeling often
become the make-or-break issues in system development.
This site can help guide technical
personnel, managers, and executives at all levels on the best
use of information architecture and modeling in healthcare system
development and implementation. It describes information modeling
best practices and also modeling and architecture of clinical data
repositories and data warehouses. This site also provides a variety of
research and white papers for clients, and hosts a User Group for
licensees of the
ANSI/ADA 1000 Specification for a Clinical Data Architecture.
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