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Recent developments in medical informatics research have afforded possibilities for great advances in health care delivery. These exciting opportunities also present formidable challenges to the implementation and integration of technologies in the workplace. As in most domains, there is a gulf between technologic artifacts and end users. Since medical practice is a human endeavor, there is a need for bridging disciplines to enable clinicians to benefit from rapid technologic advances [...]

Medical informatics is an emergent interdisciplinary field described as drawing upon and contributing to both the health sciences and information sciences. The authors elucidate the disciplinary nature and internal structure of the field.

Even though medical informatics is most often viewed from the perspective of its host disciplines in clinical and biologic medicine, it has an identity and agenda of its own. This paper is an attempt to promote discussion about the long-term role and agenda for medical informatics as a discipline into the next decade. The discussion has two main lines of argument, one about the "engineering" goals of informatics and the [...]

The 1998 Scientific Symposium of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) was devoted to developing visions for the future of health care and biomedicine and a strategic agenda for health and biomedical informatics in support of those visions. This symposium focus was prompted by the many major changes currently underway in health care delivery, education, and research, as well as in our health and biomedical enterprises, and by the [...]

: To develop a generic methodology for the online assessment of medical education materials available on the World Wide Web and to implement it for pilot subject areas.

The International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP) is a collaborative project under the auspices of the International Council of Nurses. The alpha version is available online for comment in preparation for the release of the beta version in 1999. The authors answer the most-frequently asked questions about the ICNP and encourage nurses in the United States to participate in the revision by sending comments and suggestions to the American Nurses [...]

Building on the work of previous authors, the Computer-based Patient Record Institute (CPRI) Work Group on Codes and Structures has described features of a classification scheme for implementation within a computer-based patient record. The authors of the current study reviewed the evaluation literature related to six major nursing vocabularies (the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association Taxonomy 1, the Nursing Interventions Classification, the Nursing Outcomes Classification, the Home Health Care Classification [...]

If nurses, physicians, and health care planners knew more about patients' health-related preferences, care would most likely be cheaper, more effective, and closer to the individuals' desires. In order for patient preferences to be effectively used in the delivery of health care, it is important that patients be able to formulate and express preferences, that these judgments be made known to the clinician at the time of care, and that [...]

Clinical guidelines are heralded as a positive contribution to improving quality of care and ensuring the effectiveness of care. From the perspective of the health services researcher, the authors propose a model of how informatics can support the implementation of clinical guidelines and their integration into systems for decision support and clinical audit. Each element of the model is discussed in turn.