Are medical informatics and nursing informatics distinct disciplines? The 1999 ACMI debate

The 1999 debate of the American College of Medical Informatics focused on t he proposition that medical informatics and nursing informatics are distinc tive disciplines that require their own core curricula, training programs, and professional identities. Proponents of this position emphasized that in formatics training, technology applications, and professional identities ar e closely tied to the activities of the health professionals they serve and that, as nursing and medicine differ, so do the corresponding efforts in i nformation science and technology. Opponents of the proposition asserted th at informatics is built on a re-usable and widely applicable set of methods that are common to all health science disciplines, and that "medical infor matics" continues to be a useful name for a composite core discipline that should be studied by all students, regardless of their health profession or ientation.