MEDICAL INFORMATICS - A KEY TO THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE AND HEALTH-CARE

Commenting on the paper of Heathfield and Wyatt (The Road to Professio nalism in Medical Informatics: A Proposal for Debate. Methods of Infor mation in Medicine 1995) argued that Medical Informatics as a scientif ic discipline has reached a professional status. However, depending on the geographic location and the field of research, education or appli cations, requirements for further ''professionalization'' differ. It i s proposed that Medical Informatics and Health Informatics should be r egarded as one discipline and that Medical Informatics has to contribu te to research, education and to the practice of health care in order to improve diagnostics, therapy and health care organization. The futu re of Medical Informatics is strongly dependent on health care profess ionals, who must be well-educated in medical informatics; these may be physicians, nurses, health care administrators, specialists in medica l informatics, or others. There is still a continuing need for the sys tematic processing of data, information and knowledge in medicine and in health care. Also, due to its essentially cross-sectional nature en compassing most other disciplines in medicine and health sciences, Med ical Informatics must be regarded as a key to the future of medicine a nd health care.