Arrival of 8th Edition of Health Informatics: Practical Guide

I am pleased to announce publication of the 8th Edition of Health Informatics: Practical Guide. The goal of this textbook is to provide a comprehensive introduction to the field of health informatics (also known as biomedical and health informatics or just plain informatics) for students. The book can also serve as a current update for those who are already practitioners. As in any professional field, there is a knowledge base and history of scientific progress in informatics that informs current practice, and this book aims to impart that.

The impetus for this book came from Robert Hoyt, MD, who served as its lead Editor for the first seven editions. In preparing the seventh edition, Dr. Hoyt engaged me as a Co-Editor, with the plan for me to become the Editor of the 8th edition. Dr. Hoyt and his wife Ann Yoshihashi, MD have been great mentors in the process of putting a book like this together. As with the previous editions, the book is available in print and eBook formats.

This book is aimed at those who wish to learn about the field of biomedical and health informatics. The content is almost completely redone from previous editions and roughly follows a course I have taught for three decades to about 5000 students in a graduate course at Oregon Health & Science University, the American Medical Informatics Association 10x10 ("ten by ten") program, and a number of other derivative courses for medical students, graduate students, and health IT professionals. I have engaged a variety of other authors for many of the chapters to give additional expertise and perspective. This edition of the book is completely rewritten from earlier editions, reflecting the profound change and progress in the field.

I have established a Web site for the book, which has links to purchasing the book in print and eBook formats from the publisher, Lulu.com. The book is also available from Amazon.com in print and Kindle formats. The Web site also contains sample chapters in PDF and EPUB formats, and will maintain an Errata page of errors discovered in the book.

The chapters of the book include:

1. Introduction to Biomedical and Health Informatics
2. A Short History of Biomedical and Health Informatics
3. Computing Concepts for Biomedicine and Health
4. Electronic Health Records
5. Standards and Interoperability
6. Data Science and Artificial Intelligence
7. Clinical Decision Support
8. Natural Language Processing
9. The Role of Health Informatics in Safety, Quality, and Value
10. Health Information Exchange (HIE)
11. EHR System Selection and Implementation
12. Telemedicine and Telehealth
13. Privacy and Security
14. Information Retrieval (Search)
15. Clinical Research Informatics
16. Translational Bioinformatics
17. Nursing Informatics
18. Consumer Health Informatics
19. Public Health Informatics
20. Evidence-Based Medicine
21. Imaging Informatics
22. Ethical Issues in Health Informatics
23. Human-Computer Interaction