Health IT: Past, Present, and Future

Health Informatics (HI)—also known as Health Information Systems—is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field concerned with the implementation and improvement of technology resources and management approaches in healthcare.

This field amalgamates computer science, information technology, and healthcare are into a single discipline. Health informatics professionals collect, maintain, analyze, and use patient data to enhance healthcare service delivery and other activities within healthcare environments.

Peter Reichertz delivered a lecture on the past, present, and future of Health informatics in 1984. In the meanwhile, there has been a great development in both medicine and informatics. One big advantage of this development is that our life expectancy is now substantially higher than it was a few decades ago. This progress, which is resulting in geriatric societies, has an impact on the organization of health care and the ongoing growth of its data systems.

The humble origins of healthcare informatics began in the 1960s, under the jurisdiction of ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials), which now goes by the name ASTM International. This was the first time in history that an organization began to create standards for healthcare informatics. The objective was to allow scientists and medical laboratories to interact via a laboratory bulletin board, where they could share research, medical advances, and clinical data.

So, if you're interested in the confluence of healthcare and computer science, health informatics might be the right career path for you.