Handbook of Medical Informatics

This book provides state-of-the-art information regarding the field of medical informatics. Information Technology (IT) has revolutionized the daily life of a common man, while medical science has been making rapid progress in understanding disease mechanisms, formulating diagnostic techniques and implementing successful treatment regimen, even for those cases which would have been classified as a poor prognosis a decade earlier. The convergence of information technology and biomedicine has introduced additional dimensions of computerized databases for patient conditions, revolutionizing the way health care and patient information is recorded, processed, interpreted and utilized for improving the quality of life. This book discusses three major elementary issues of medical information acquisition from a patient's and health care professional's point of view, translational approaches from a researcher's viewpoint and finally the application potential as required by the clinicians/physicians. The book encompasses modern issues in Information Technology, Bioinformatics Methods and Clinical Applications. It describes the underlying process of procurement of information in a health system, recent technological developments in biomedicine and the realistic evaluation of medical informatics.