Abstract:
Health and medical informatics education has meanwhile gained considerable importance
for medicine and for health care. Specialized programs in health/medical informatics
have therefore been established within the last decades.
This special issue of Methods of Information in Medicine contains papers on health
and medical informatics education. It is mainly based on selected papers from the
5th Working Conference on Health/Medical Informatics Education of the International
Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), which was held in September 1992 at the University
of Heidelberg/Technical School Heilbronn, Germany, as part of the 20 years’ celebration
of medical informatics education at Heidelberg/Heilbronn. Some papers were presented
on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the health information science program
of the School of Health Information Science at the University of Victoria, British
Columbia, Canada. Within this issue, programs in health/medical informatics are presented
and analyzed: the medical informatics program at the University of Utah, the medical
informatics program of the University of Heidelberg/School of Technology Heilbronn,
the health information science program at the University of Victoria, the health informatics
program at the University of Minnesota, the health informatics management program
at the University of Manchester, and the health information management program at
the University of Alabama. They all have in common that they are dedicated curricula
in health/medical informatics which are university-based, leading to an academic degree
in this field. In addition, views and recommendations for health/medical informatics
education are presented. Finally, the question is discussed, whether health and medical
informatics can be regarded as a separate discipline with the necessity for specialized
curricula in this field.
In accordance with the aims of IMIA, the intention of this special issue is to promote
the further development of health and medical informatics education in order to contribute
to high quality health care and medical research.
Keywords
Health Informatics Education - Medical Informatics Education
