Medical informatics: A key to the future of medicine and health care?

Commenting on the paper of Heathfield and Wyatt (The Road to Professionalism in Medical Informatics: A Proposal for Debate. Methods of Information in Medicine 1995) argued that Medical Informatics as a scientific discipline has reached a professional status. However, depending on the geographic location and the field of research, education or applications, requirements for further ''professionalization'' differ. It is proposed that Medical Informatics and Health Informatics should be regarded as one discipline and that Medical Informatics has to contribute to research, education and to the practice of health care in order to improve diagnostics, therapy and health care organization. The future of Medical Informatics is strongly dependent on health care professionals, who must be well-educated in medical informatics; these may be physicians, nurses, health care administrators, specialists in medical informatics, or others. There is still a continuing need for the systematic processing of data, information and knowledge in medicine and in health care. Also, due to its essentially cross-sectional nature encompassing most other disciplines in medicine and health sciences, Medical Informatics must be regarded as a key to the future of medicine and health care.