Health informatics

INTRODUCTION

Health care is very much an information business. Administering health care was the subject of many early systems. It was not long after the first computers appeared that they were being used to support the finance function at the London Hospital. Things have come a long way since those days and still have far to go. Use of computers to support the clinical care of patients is a more recent phenomenon, but one that is obvious if you think about it. Much of health care deals with the collection of symptoms and results of tests to form a diagnosis. The formulation of a plan and its implementation involves the collection and recording of much information.

The recent Health and Social Care Act 2012 initiates major changes to the NHS, ...