Behavioral Healthcare Informatics

This book will provide an overview of the state of the art in behavioral health care informatics as well as discussing the challenges on the horizon, such as organizational issues, human-centered issues, educating healthcare executives about technology issues, educating clinicians about behavioral informatics systems, and consumer issues. In addition to significant contributions by the editors, the book will contain contributions from a small number of acknowledged experts within their respective fields.
As daily living becomes more stressful, socio-psychological or behavioral related problems become more intense. Informatics has the potential to transform the world of behavioral practitioners to enable them to assist people more easily. This book will focus on informatics-related topics that all disciplines connected to the behavioral health will find very useful for their day-to-day practice.

Behavioral Health Care Informatics is an essential resource for clinicians, executives, information technology officers, and consumers, as well as students and faculty in psychiatry, psychology, and social work who need to know what is possible today and what lies ahead as technology and behavioral health care converge. Covering a full range of areas from technology infrastructures to organizational issues, this book fills the void this discipline has endured by detailing how to improve information systems and facilitate the transformation of data into knowledge, allowing information to be organized and useful.

Edited by leaders in the field of managed healthcare, quality improvement, psychiatry, management, and informatics, this book is a "must read" in the field of health informatics and should be a reference book for any personal, public, or educational library.

The book is divided into sections serving as "modules" for the reader. Topics include:

-Emerging clinical technologies in psychotherapy and medication and care management

-The impact of technology on quality in both the public and private sectors

-Behavioral health consumerism and the Internet

-Organizational aspects of implementing informatics

-Managing clinical care in a pervasive computing environment

 

Naakesh A. Dewan, M.D., is Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Quality Innovations and Research in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati. A noted scholar, consultant, and executive in the field of behavioral health informatics and quality improvement, Dr. Dewan has implemented and overseen informatics-based quality improvement systems in more than 150 hospitals and managed care organizations in his career. Dr. Dewan is also the founding editor for iMcKesson’s patient education software the "Behavioral Health Advisor,"and sits on the board of IHP, a leading provider of XML-based solutions for health care and other industries. Dr. Dewan is a member of the advisory board of MD Computing and continues to practice both emergency and community psychiatry in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Nancy M. Lorenzi, Ph.D., is a professor and Assistant Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennesee. Dr. Lorenzi is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and a board member of the American Medical Informatics Association and the International Medical Informatics Association.

Robert T. Riley, Ph.D., is president of Riley Associates in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Riley is renowned internationally for his skill in translating management concepts for the technically educated person. Dr. Riley and Dr. Lorenzi have coauthored a book for the health informatics sector on managing technological change.

Sarbori R. Bhattacharya, M.D., is an Informatics and Quality Improvement fellow at the Center for Quality Innovations and Research in the department of Psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio.