Book Review
Health Informatics: An Overview
E Hovenga, M Kidd and B Cesnik (eds)
ISBN: 978-0-443-05236-1; 1996; 374 pages; Churchill Livingstone, Melbourne;
Stephen Chu
Associate Professor of Health Informatics,
Department of Management Science and Information, Systems University of Auckland, New Zealand
Health informatics is a relatively young discipline but it has generated large amounts of knowledge since the 1970s. This is reflected in the breadth (and to a certain degree, depth) of knowledge contained in this book.
The first four chapters of the book provide readers with highly informative materials on development of health informatics/information management. The importance and impact of standardised health care terminologies and data communication standards in facilitating health computing development are clearly explained in chapter four. This chapter is very informative.
Section two of the book covers basic computer concepts including systems analysis, database concepts, data communications, and technical aspects of security and confidentiality. Although these concepts are not discussed within the specific context of health informatics, they provide useful basic computer knowledge to health care professionals. The concept of systems specification should be further explored in chapter six as it can provide extremely useful knowledge for evaluation of health care information technology (IT) products by health care managers.
Chapter five focuses on 'Standards in Health Care Informatics'. The topic is extremely important but the chapter was inadequately developed. It provides no further information other than a few standard organisations'/ committees' names. Work done by EDIFACT, HL7, MEDIX, MIB has not been discussed. COBRAMed and its emerging role in shaping standards development is not mentioned. Technical aspects of health informatics standards have been omitted and references for advanced readings in this area are provided.
Section three is the knowledge warehouse of this book. Chapters twelve to fourteen provide clear and well-structured information about clinical information management, decision support and expert systems. The concept and importance of electronic medical records are well-explained. The level of knowledge is particularly suitable for beginners or students of health informatics.
Chapters fifteen to eighteen focus on management of images and signals generated from radiology machines and monitoring devices, communication technologies for images and signals, and telemedicine. Information in these chapters is extremely well-structured and technically more informative, as such readers might need to have higher levels of technical knowledge/understanding to fully appreciate the information.
Education and related issues are explored in chapters nineteen to twenty. These chapters dwell heavily on computer-based education (CBE) solutions. The authors focused quite significantly on front-end tools, authoring packages and multimedia technologies. The design of CBE contents and use of clinical databases in education and the related issues are not explored.
Medico-legal issues are discussed in the last chapter of this section. It contains general discussion on privacy and security. Discussion on these issues has not been specifically related to health informatics.
It is delightful to see the book includes a chapter discussing informatics issues with a health consumer perspective. However, ethical issues related to use of IT in health care have not been explored.
Section four of the book contains 5 chapters. Issues and concepts explored include impact of IT on organisational culture, strategies and policies, operation processes, and casemix and private practice at organisational and national levels. Information in these chapters is particularly useful to readers at managerial levels.
The last section (five) focuses on the use of IT in health care research. A number of data processing and statistical packages have been identified and discussed. Unfortunately, Internet information services such as e-mail, news groups and World Wide Web (WWW) which contain a phenomenal wealth of knowledge and information which are extremely useful to clinicians, researchers, educators and students, have not been mentioned at all in this section and the education related chapters in previous section.
Many chapters of this book contain a number of special terms and acronyms such as RAIDs, ATM, TCP/ IP, FDDI etc. They can be quite threatening and confusing to beginners. This book does not contain a glossary section which can provide helpful information to many readers.
In summary, this book has covered the most critical issues and concepts in the discipline of health informatics. It is useful reading for health care professionals who are beginning to explore the paths in health informatics.
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