About Our SIG

SIG Health Informatics (HLTH) is concerned with the application of information science theories, information technology, and communication principles to biomedical science and health care and their related social and ethical issues. SIG HLTH seeks to bring together researchers/practitioners from different disciplines and to provide a highly collaborative forum for sharing, managing and leveraging resource, knowledge and expertise for improving the quality, effectiveness, and use of health information.

With an interdisciplinary nature and a broad range of applications, health informatics touches the clinical, technical and communicative aspects of a large range and a great types of health related data. Specific areas of interest include but not limited to: medical information collection, management, dissemination, and communication; biomedical information systems for academic, group and solo practice, hospital, industrial, health care delivery, and research institutions; biomedical simulation, telecommunications, virtual communities and networks, decision support and knowledge systems, and information infrastructures; and health information systems for the public.

Defintion of Health Informatics (credited to Bill Hersh)

Biomedical and health informatics (BMHI) is the field concerned with the optimal use of information, often aided by technology, to improve individual health, healthcare, public health, and biomedical research.