MEDICAL INFORMATICS IN RESEARCH, TEACHING , AND PATIENT-CARE

The field of medical informatics in its current understanding is defin ed and criteria distinguishing this field from similar areas are provi ded. Special consideration is given to its position at a School of Med icine-in particular to the University of Vienna Medical School with th e Vienna General Hospital as its teaching hospital. Demands for medica l informatics and electronic data processing (EDP) in this extended fi eld of activity come from four different sources: (1) research in medi cal informatics, (2) teaching of medical informatics as well as EDP tr aining, (3) EDP service for research and teaching, and (4) EDP hospita l operations to assist patient care. (Purely administrative EDP demand s are not considered here.) It is shown that the different demands can be fulfilled by the usually available institutions involved in medica l informatics and EDP at a School of Medicine. At many places these in stitutions are as follows: (1) a department or division of medical inf ormatics with a possibly attached computer center dedicated to provide assistance in the area of research and teaching, (2) the computer cen ter of the respective university the School of Medicine belongs to, (3 ) the computer center of the hospital-owned institution responsible fo r all EDP activities connected to patient care, and (4) external softw are companies and EDP training centers. To succeed in the development of an exhaustive, school-wide system of medical informatics and EDP th at considers the different demands in research, teaching, and EDP hosp ital operations equally, close and well-suited coordination between th e institutions involved is necessary.