Contemporary Health Informatics

Health informatics, the application of information technology to healthcare delivery, is undergoing dramatic transformation. More open, cloud-based systems built using approachable Internet standards and conventions are facilitating product innovation, provider adoption, and data sharing. Mobile devices and sensors are enabling more continuous care and increased participation by patients. New financial incentives are promoting models of technology-powered care that emphasize more holistic and coordinated approaches. Digital health records are increasingly being mined and analyzed to uncover new medical knowledge, promote evidence-based treatments, and determine the clinical and cost effectiveness of care. This text helps students of diverse backgrounds to study and master these contemporary trends and technologies by focusing on ambulatory care for chronic disease, arguably the major challenge facing US healthcare.

Contemporary Health Informatics is divided into four sections: background on the US healthcare system and federal policies intended to re-engineer it; the core technologies of health information technology; the application of these technologies in state-of-the-art real-world products and solutions; and the mining, analysis, and visualization of the vast amounts of newly available digital health data to gain knowledge and improve care delivery.

Key Features

Up-to-date: written within the context of current health informatics
Grounded in actual practice: numerous case studies illustrate the practical applications of the technologies discussed
Forward facing: based on the evolution of the healthcare system away from hospitals and toward primary and community care
Written for a broad audience: based on Dr. Braunstein’s MOOC that has proven successful for learners from healthcare providers to information technologists to those with numerous other health-related backgrounds and skill sets
About the Author

Mark L. Braunstein, MD was an early developer of health informatics systems dating back to his EMR at the Medical University of South Carolina’s pioneering Department of Family Medicine in the early 1970s. He joined Georgia Tech in 2007 where he is professor of the practice in the College of Computing and teaches health informatics both as a graduate seminar and a popular Mass Open Online Course (MOOC). His previous book is Health Informatics in the Cloud, a brief guide to the field for nontechnical readers.