IT

Medical informatics is the intersection of information science, computer science, and health care. This field deals with the resources, devices, and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information in health and biomedicine.
This program covers the multidisciplinary field of informatics, decision support systems, telemedicine, ethics, consumer health informatics, international healthcare systems, global health informatics, translational research informatics, and home care. Students will learn how to design and implement innovative applications and promote new technologies to improve health care. Our program is designed to focus on:
• complex medical decisions
• evidence-based medicine
• disease management
• population health management
Established regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), include specific security and compliance provisions for the healthcare sector. The advancement of technology in the medical field, accompanied by the requirements to keep sensitive data confidential, creates the need for a graduate program that offers medical informatics education and provides course work and study in the critical area of data security.
The Master of Science in Medical Informatics is designed to
• deepen understanding and knowledge of medical informatics and computer/information security
• provide research opportunities within the field of medical informatics
• provide a flexible curriculum to allow for both traditional and nontraditional graduate students
Graduates will be qualified to work in hospital and healthcare systems, health informatics firms, research laboratories, computer/information security firms, medical technology firms, public health organizations, medical software companies, insurance companies, and governmental organizations.
Medical informatics is found at the intersection of healthcare and technology. It is where skills in both medical and computer sciences come together in an effort to improve healthcare and patient outcomes. Professionals in this hybrid field draw on expertise from both disciplines to put technology to its best use in patient care, clinical and research settings.

Types of Work in Medical Informatics
Medical informatics professionals are tasked with using information technology to its greatest advantage in the healthcare industry. This means they are responsible for such tasks as:
• Creating, maintaining or facilitating new ways for medical facilities and practices to keep electronic health records (EHR),
• Improving communication between healthcare providers and facilities to ensure the best patient outcomes,
• Storing, managing and analyzing data for research,
• Assisting with complex, technology-dependent research, such as that involved in human genome sequencing.
Specialties in the field of medical infromatics
Medical and computer science professionals who wish to transition into this field with a master’s or doctoral degree and students heading straight into this arena will find a number of specialties exist. They include:
• Bioinformatics: Practitioners in this specialty are concerned with storing, retrieving, sharing and helping analyze biomedical information for research and/or patient care. Subspecialties include chemical, nursing and dental informatics.
• Public health informatics: This specialty involves the use of technology to guide how the public learns about health and health care while also ensuring access to the latest medical research. Professionals also ensure public health practices have access to the information they need.
• Organizational informatics: The focus here is ensuring a smooth flow of communication within a healthcare organization.
• Social informatics: These specialists study the social aspects of computer science while gaining insights into how information technology affects social environments and how social environments affect information technology.
• Clinical informatics: This is the application of informatics and information technology for clinical research and patient care. Professionals leverage information technology for medical education, patient education and students, among others.
Hx Informatics started early development in the 1960s and gained widespread adoption in the 1970s, mainly with electronic health records (EHRs). As technology advanced, thanks in part to the acceptance and development of personal computers and personal devices (smartphones), informatics exponentially advanced. The widespread adoption of medical informatics allowed healthcare providers secured and quick access to pertinent data on a patient.

Medical informatics is a new knowledge domain of computer and information science, engineering
and technology in all fields of health and medicine, including research, education and practice.
Medical informatics has evolved over the past 30 years as medicine learned to exploit the extraordinary
capabilities of the electronic digital computer to better meet its complex information needs. The
first articles on this subject appeared in the 1950s, the number of publications rapidly increased in
the 1960s and medical informatics was identified as a new specialty in the 1970s.