Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine (Health Informatics)

by Edward H. Shortliffe, Lawrence M. Fagan

The practice of modern medicine and biomedical research requires sophisticated information technologies with which to manage patient information, plan diagnostic procedures, interpret laboratory results, and carry out investigations. Medical Informatics provides both a conceptual framework and a practical inspiration for this swiftly emerging scientific discipline at the intersection of computer science, decision science, information science, cognitive science, and biomedicine. Now revised and in its second edition, this text meets the growing demand by practitioners, researchers, and students for a comprehensive introduction to key topics in the field. Authored by leaders in medical informatics and extensively tested in their courses, the chapters in this volume constitute an effective textbook for students of medical informatics and its areas of application. The book is also a useful reference work for individual readers needing to understand the role that computer can play in the provision of clinical services and the pursuit of biological questions. The volume is organized so as first to explain basic concepts and the to illustrate them with specific systems and technologies. The book has been extensively revised and updated for this second edition, and new topics ¿ Standards in Medical Informatics ¿ Ethics of Health Users, Standards, and Outcomes ¿ Evaluation and Technology Assessment ¿ Public Health and Consumer uses of Health Education, Research, Policy, Prevention, and Quality Assurance ¿ Bioinformatics Edward H. Shortliffe, M.D., Ph.D., is professor and chair of the department of Medical Informatics at Columbia University¿s College of Physicians and Surgeons. A member of the Institute of Medicine and a regent to the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine, he is also a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and serves on the President¿s Information Technology advisory Committee. Leslie E. Perreault, M.S., is a director at the First Consulting Group in New York City. A graduate of Stanford University¿s training program in medical informatics, she has extensive experience as a consultant to healthcare organizations, especially regarding clinical systems and their integration to the enterprise. Gio Wiederhold, Ph.D., is professor of computer science at Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in Medicine and Electrical Engineering . He is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, the IEEE, and the ACM.

Unknown Binding

First published May 1, 2000

About the author

Edward ("Ted") Hance Shortliffe (born 1947) is a Canadian-born American biomedical informatician, physician, and computer scientist. Shortliffe is a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence in medicine. He was the principal developer of the clinical expert system MYCIN, one of the first rule-based artificial intelligence expert systems, which obtained clinical data interactively from a physician user and was used to diagnose and recommend treatment for severe infections. While never used in practice (because it preceded the era of local-area networking and could not be integrated with patient records and physician workflow), its performance was shown to be comparable to and sometimes more accurate than that of Stanford infectious disease faculty. This spurred the development of a wide range of activity in the development of rule-based expert systems, knowledge representation, belief nets and other areas, and its design greatly influenced the subsequent development of computing in medicine.

He is also regarded as a founder of the field of biomedical informatics, and in 2006 received one of its highest honors, the Morris F. Collen Award given by the American College of Medical Informatics.