Health Informatics Basics

Foundational Curriculum:
Cluster 4: Informatics
Module 7: The Informatics Process and Principles of Health
Informatics
Unit 1: Health Informatics Basics
FC-C4M7U1

Curriculum Developers: Angelique Blake, Rachelle Blake, Pauliina

Hulkkonen, Sonja Huotari, Milla Jauhiainen, Johanna Tolonen, and
Alpo Vӓrri

20/60 This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
1
 Unit Objectives
• Define health informatics
• Describe the two sub-disciplines of health
informatics
• Identify nine different types of related informatics
disciplines used in healthcare and state the
various definitions of informatics within the
health sector
• Identify key informatics concepts, models and
theories
• Describe the importance of informatics in active
and healthy ageing

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 2
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Health Informatics
• Informatics is the union of information, people and
science/process/technology
• Health informatics is the interdisciplinary study of the design,
development, adoption, and application of information and
technology-based innovations in public health and healthcare
services delivery, management, and planning
• Health informatics is often used to describe the full range of
application and research topics for which biomedical
informatics is the pertinent underlying scientific discipline

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 3
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Health Informatics Subsets
• Health Informatics is the overarching theme for all informatics used in
healthcare. The two main sub-disciplines are:
– Clinical Informatics
– Population Health Informatics
Other subsets of Health Informatics include:
– Medical informatics (MI)
– Public Health informatics
– Consumer health informatics
– Nursing informatics (NI)
– Dental Informatics
– Nutrition Informatics
– Pharmacy Informatics
– Biomedical informatics
– Translational bioinformatics
– Computational health informatics (CHI)
– Clinical research informatics (CRI)
– Informatics in Active and Healthy Ageing
*All informatics definitions in this unit have been developed and validated in conjunction with the HIMSS TIGER
Committee and its Informatics Definitions Document
This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 4
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Clinical Informatics
• Clinical informatics* is a subset of health
informatics used by clinicians in the
application deliver healthcare services HEALTH SYSTEM
• It blends information technology into clinical
care processes, usually within a health system CLINICAL
• It is also referred to as applied clinical INFORMATICS
CLINICAL INFORMATION
informatics and operational informatics CARE TECHNOLOGY
– Clinical informatics includes a wide range of
topics ranging from clinical decision support to
visual images (e.g., radiological, pathological,
dermatological, ophthalmological, etc.); from
clinical documentation to provider order entry
systems; and from system design to system
implementation and adoption issues

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 5
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Public, Consumer and Population Health
Informatics

• Public Health informatics is the field that optimizes the use of information to
improve individual health, health care, public health practice, biomedical and
health services research, and health policy.
– PHI operates at the intersection of public health and computer science. It relies on information technology
(IT) systems to help address the core functions of public health as defined by the Institute of Medicine:
assessment of population health, policy development, and assurance of the availability of high-quality
public health services. It is thus related to but distinct from biomedical and clinical informatics, which seek
to improve the health of individuals within the health care system.
• Consumer health informatics analyses consumers’ needs for information;
studies and implements methods of making information accessible to
consumers; and models and integrates consumers’ preferences into medical
information systems.
– Consumer informatics stands at the crossroads of other disciplines, such as nursing informatics, public
health, health promotion, health education, library science, and communication science…it is paving the
way for health care in the information age. It helps bridge the gap between patients and health resources.
It looks at informatics from multiple consumer or patient views.

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
FC-C4M7U1 innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 6
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Public, Consumer and Population Health
Informatics
• Population health is defined as the health outcomes of a
group of individuals, including the distribution of such
outcomes within the group. Therefore, Population Health
Informatics is the intersection of public health informatics and
consumer informatics. It is the systematic study of populations via
secondary analysis of massive data collections (called "big data")
about people.

• Population informatics applies data science to social genome data to answer

fundamental questions about human society and population
– It is an emerging research area at the intersection of SBEH (Social, Behavioral, Economic and
Health) sciences, computer science, and statistics
– It involves using quantitative methods and computational tools to answer fundamental
questions about populations
– These groups are often geographic populations such as nations or communities, but can also be
other groups such as employees, ethnic groups, disabled persons, prisoners, or any other
defined group. The health outcomes of such groups are of relevance to policy makers in both
the public and private sectors.
This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 7
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Public, Consumer and Population Health
Informatics

• Note that population health is not just the overall health of a

population but also includes the distribution of health.
• Overall health could be quite high if the majority of the population is
relatively healthy—even though a minority of the population is much
less healthy.
• Ideally such differences would be eliminated or at least substantially
reduced.

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 8
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Medical Informatics
In addition to clinical informatics and public
health informatics, the following disciplines of
informatics are related to healthcare:
• Medical informatics (MI) is the interdisciplinary
study of the design, development, adoption and
application of IT-based innovations in healthcare
services delivery, management and planning
– It can also be described as the field of information
science concerned with the analysis, use and
dissemination of medical data and information
through the application of computers to various
aspects of health care and medicine.
– Medical informatics is also frequently used to describe
the informatics field in which physicians specialize

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 9
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Nursing Informatics
• Nursing informatics (NI) is the specialty that
integrates nursing science with multiple
information management and analytical
sciences to identify, define, manage, and
communicate data, information, knowledge,
and wisdom in nursing practice
– NI supports nurses, consumers, patients, the
interprofessional healthcare team, and other
stakeholders in their decision-making in all roles
and settings to achieve desired outcomes. This
support is accomplished through the use of
information structures, information processes, and
information technology

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 10
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Dental, Nutrition and Pharmacy
Informatics
• Dental informatics is the application of computer and
information science to improve dental practice,
research, education and management. The field of
dental informatics is concerned with the intersection of
health informatics and dentistry as a whole
• Nutrition informatics is the effective retrieval,
organization, storage and optimum use of information,
data and knowledge for food and nutrition-related
problem solving and decision-making
• Pharmacy informatics the scientific field that focuses
on medication-related data and knowledge within the
continuum of healthcare systems - including its
acquisition, storage, analysis, use and dissemination - in
the delivery of optimal medication-related patient care
and health outcomes
This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 11
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Biomedical and Translational Informatics
• Biomedicine is medicine based on the application of the
principles of the natural sciences, especially biology and
biochemistry
• Biomedical informatics is the interdisciplinary field that
studies and pursues the effective uses of biomedical
(relating to biomedicine) data, information, and
knowledge for scientific inquiry, problem solving, and
decision-making, driven by efforts to improve human
health1
– Bioinformatics:
• is used to develop tools and methods (usually software) for
understanding biological data
• is related to research in molecular biology
• can include fields from signal processing to biology, combining
statistical and mathematical techniques to compute results

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 12
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Biomedical and Translational Informatics
• Translational Bioinformatics is the development of
storage, analytic, and interpretive methods to optimize
the transformation of increasingly voluminous biomedical
data, and genomic data, into proactive, predictive,
preventive, and participatory health.
• Translational bioinformatics includes research on the
development of novel techniques for the integration of
biological and clinical data and the evolution of clinical
informatics methodology to encompass biological
observations.
• The end product of translational bioinformatics is newly
found knowledge from these integrative efforts that can
be disseminated to a variety of stakeholders, including
biomedical scientists, clinicians, and patients.

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 13
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Computational Health Informatics
• Computational health informatics (CHI)
specifically integrates computer science
techniques that are relevant in healthcare.
Healthcare provides an extremely wide
variety of problems that can be tackled using
computational techniques. Informaticists in
this area study the underlying principles of
computer science that allow for medically
related algorithms and systems to be
developed. This subspecialty of health
informatics frequently analyse “big data”. It
involves health and computer scientists
working in unison to develop the next
generation of healthcare technologies
through computational informatics

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 14
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Clinical Research Informatics
• Clinical research informatics (CRI) is an
amalgamation of clinical and research
informatics, plays an important role in
clinical research, patient care, and the
building of healthcare system. It is one
of the rapidly growing subdivisions of
biomedical informatics. It plays an
important role in developing new
informatics theories, tools and
solutions. Clinical research informatics
applies the core foundations,
principles, and technologies of health
informatics to clinical research
This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 15
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Health Informatics Visualized

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 16
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Informatics Concepts
Information
• Information Architecture (IA) is the Architecture
structural design of shared information
environments. It is a crucial component health
data
end
users
in the development of healthcare
technology systems, applications and
interfaces.
– Informaticists play a part in helping to
structure the underlying information and
its presentation in a logical and intuitive
way so that people can put information to
use. They build frameworks to effectively
collect, store and deliver information, and
drive the navigation, content layout,
personalization, and transactional features
of the systems and technology.

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 17
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Informatics Concepts (cont’d)
• Human–Computer Interaction (commonly
referred to as HCI) researches the design
and use of computer technology, focused
on the interfaces between people (users)
and computers.
– Health informaticists use HCI to both observe
the ways in which humans interact with
computers and technology in the healthcare
setting, and design technologies that let
humans interact more effectively for
healthcare in novel ways

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 18
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Informatics Concepts (cont’d)
• Information Assurance and
Cybersecurity is the practice of
creating and managing safe and secure
systems. It is crucial for healthcare
organizations public and private, large
and small.
– Informaticists use this component to
build, integrate and maintain individual
and organizational privacy and security in
the creation, deployment, use, and
management of health information,
systems and technology

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 19
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Key Models in Health Informatics

• There are several key models in health informatics

that approach how to effectively integrate
technology systems and people
• These include:
– Technology Acceptance Model
– Disruptive Innovation
– Diffusion of Innovation
– Sociotechnical Theory Model

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 20
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Key Models in Health Informatics (Cont’d)
• Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is an
information systems’ theory that models how users
come to accept and use a new technology when
presented. Because new technologies are
constantly introduced to healthcare, the rate of
user acceptance depends heavily on perceived
purpose and accessibility of the technology
– Developed by Fred Davis & Richard Bagozzi

• Disruptive Innovation is an information systems’

theory that realizes how a groundbreaking
innovation can disrupt the current standard and
eventually become the new industrial norm.
Healthcare technologies can be introduced that
become so popular as to change the current model.
– Developed by Clayton M. Christensen

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 21
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Key Models in Health Informatics
(cont’d)
• Diffusion of Innovation is an information systems’
model that seeks to explain a decision process of
innovation adoption with five stages: awareness,
interest, evaluation, trial & adoption.
Communication influences the go or no-go decisions Go No-Go
at different stages of the process, or whether or not
the innovation can move on to the next step
– Developed by Bryee Ruan & Neal C. Gross
Technical
• Sociotechnical Theory Model is an information
systems’ model that recognizes the interaction Social
between social and technical sub-systems. These
two factors are then compared and used together to
form the design of a technology
– Developed by Tavistock Institute, London
Social

Technical

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 22
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Informatics in Active and Healthy
Ageing
• Healthy ageing (HA) refers to active engagement with life, optimal
cognitive and physical functioning and low risk of disease that
enables older people to participate within their limitations and
continue to be physically, cognitively, socially and spiritually active
• As the use of information and communication technologies
increases among older adults, eHealth potentially represents an
effective means to promote HA
• Informatics can also be used in ambient intelligent environments
(AmIE) to contribute to active and healthy ageing
• An ambient intelligence environment refers to an electronic
environment that is sensitive and responsive to the presence of
people. It is often described in the form of scenarios.
• Technology and aging as an area of research has expanded during
the 2000s, engaging researchers from different scientific fields
that can only be adequately tackled by a cross-disciplinary
research approach

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 23
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Informatics in Active and Healthy Ageing
(cont’d)
• Health technologies have the potential to support the
growing number of older adults who are aging in place.
Tools include visualizations (data visualisations and
visualisations of physical representations).
– Data visualisation involves the creation and study of the visual
representation of data, such as statistical graphics, plots,
information graphics and other tools
– Visualisation of physical representations, or data
physicalisation, refers to encoding data in physical artefacts,
allowing for new ways to represent and communicate data and,
as a process, can make the principles of data representation
more "graspable"
• However, the role of visualisations in supporting aging
in place remains largely unexplored
• Informatics tools are being used to support healthy
aging, by synthesizing and identifying gaps in the
literature evaluating visualisations
This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
FC-C4M7U1 received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 24
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Unit Review Checklist
 Defined health informatics (CCL01)
 Described the two sub-disciplines of health
informatics
 Identified nine different types of related
informatics disciplines used in healthcare and
stated the various definitions of informatics
within the health sector (FFB04)
 Identified key informatics concepts, models and
theories (FFB03)
 Described the importance of informatics in
active and healthy ageing
This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project
has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
25
FC-C4M7U1 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No.
727552 EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Unit 20 Review Exercise/Activity
Match the informatics term on the left with its definition on the right
1. biomedical informatics a. the intersection of health informatics and dentistry as a whole
2. clinical informatics b. blends information technology into clinical care processes, usually
3. nursing informatics within a health system
4. population health informatics c. the evolution of clinical informatics methodology to encompass
5. dental informatics biological observations
d. the intersection of public health informatics and consumer
6. public health informatics
informatics
7. medical informatics
e. the interdisciplinary field that studies the effective uses of
8. translational bioinformatics biomedical data and knowledge for scientific inquiry
9. clinical research informatics f. applies the core foundations, principles, and technologies of health
10. computational health informatics to clinical research
informatics g. the systematic application of knowledge about systems that
capture, manage, analyze and use information to improve
population health
h. integrates nursing science with information management and
analytical sciences to enhance data and knowledge
i. study of the underlying principles of computer science that allow
for medically related algorithms and systems to be developed
j. the interdisciplinary study of the design, development, adoption
and application of IT-based innovations in healthcare services
This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
FC-C4M7U1 innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 26
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Unit 20 Exam
1. Informatics is the intersection of which of the following?
a. Science and process improvement
b. Technology and change management
c. Processes, information and people
d. Tools, research and technology
2. Health informatics comprises which two main sub-
disciplines?
a. clinical informatics and biomedical informatics
b. clinical informatics and population health informatics
c. medical informatics and nursing informatics
d. biomedical informatics and population health
informatics
This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
FC-C4M7U1 innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 27
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Unit Exam (cont’d)
3. “The scientific field that focuses on medication-related
data and knowledge within the continuum of healthcare
systems ” best describes which of the following:
a. pharmacy informatics
b. dental informatics
c. medical informatics
d. clinical research informatics
4. What can be used to observe the ways in which humans
interact with computers and technology in the healthcare
setting?
a. Information Architecture
b. Graphical User Interfaces
c. Population health informatics
d. Human-Computer Interaction

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
FC-C4M7U1 innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 28
EUUSEHEALTHWORK
 Unit Exam (cont’d)
5. “New technologies are constantly introduced
to healthcare, but it may be difficult for the
users to understand everything” describes
which of the following key health informatics
models:
a. Diffusion of Innovation
b. Technology Acceptance
c. Disruptive Innovation
d. Sociotechnical Theory

This work is produced by the EU*US eHealth Work Project. This project has
received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
FC-C4M7U1 innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 727552 29
EUUSEHEALTHWORK