PERSPECTIVES ON.. .

Information Science and Health lnformatics Education

EDITOR

Lois F. Lunin Herner and Company, Arlington, Virginia 22209, and the Department Medical College, New York, New York 10021

CO-EDITOR

Marion J. Ball University of Maryland at Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland 21201

Introduction and Overview

We have entered a world of new learning and working environments based on networks of knowledge sources ac-

cessed through sophisticated workstations. These innova-

tions affect professionals in all disciplines and especially

those in the health sciences. Papers presented at ASIS meetings during Special Interest Group (SIG) sessions have apprised us of these advances, and we have deliber- ated intensely about the role of information professionals

in creating, using, and managing these innovations. ASIS is not alone in these discussions. Spirited debates continue in conferences of other societies and organizations.

New Roles, New Participants, New Challenges

New Roles

Partly as a result of new technologies, fundamental and

widespread changes have occurred in the American health

care system. In response, the role of the physicians has been changing. So, too, has the role of the information

professional. The new technologies that have been reshap- ing the workplace have required new competencies for the practice of all the professions, whether library science, in- formation science, medicine, law, or other. It is some of these very changes that have led to the growth of the new discipline of health informatics.

Health Informatics

Like information science, health informatics has not been defined to the satisfaction of all its proponents. Defi- nitions vary from emphasizing the theoretic and scientific basis for the use of automated information systems in bio-

medicine (Lindberg & Schoolman, 1986) to a discipline that includes the fundamentals of medicine, engineering,

and information science (Stead, 1987). Many of the defini- tions, however, emphasize broad information-related is- sues and contain the concepts of acquisition, organization, analysis, evaluation, synthesis, management, communica- tion, and dissemination of information as well as techno-

logical literacy. In much of the literature in informatics, the term “infor-

mation science” is used rather than informatics. Marsden Blois, M.D., was an outstanding pioneer in what he called “medical information science” and his book, Informa- tion and Medicine (1984), could easily serve as a text in

01989 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

schools of information studies. As schools of library and information studies consider revising curricula to educate

students in basic information principles and application of advanced technologies to information management, and as health informatics programs are developed for health care professionals, each discipline could profit from a running exchange of concepts, techniques, and attention to such principles as Blois espoused.

New Challenges for Information Professionals

In several academic centers the trend is to coordinate information resources including information professionals from a variety of backgrounds- health educators, health records administrators, information resource managers, medical informaticians, librarians, drug information spe- cialists, etc. The most successful information managers

will coordinate and direct all information resources and will be full participants in the institutional management team working daily with chief operating and executive of- ficers. The Integrated Academic Information Management

Systems (IAIMS) programs are already changing the ad- ministration of information resources in many academic health centers. As a result, new models for professional education are developing. Health sciences education has recognized this need and the programs it is developing contain some fresh ideas for conventional information sci-

ence curricula and practice.

Perspectives with a New Perspective

This Perspectives differs from preceding ones: in con- trast to the prior inclusion of individual articles, this issue is one long article synthesizing worldwide activities in the development of a new information discipline to which many experts in many countries have made contributions that have been woven into one integrated presentation. This issue was developed because of several concurrent ac- tivities in the field:

widespread interest in the role of the information pro- fessional nationally and internationally soul searching examination of the curricula of library, information, computing, and health sciences profes- sions for relevance to today’s and tomorrow’s needs the slow but continuing convergence or harmonization of many of the information disciplines the deep interest of the National Library of Medicine and its commitment to health inforrnatics through inter and extramural support of research and development

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE. 40(5):365-367, 1989 CCC 0002-8231/891050365-03$04.00

l programs of national and international meetings such as the annual Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care and the triennial Medinfo, and the devel- opment of special interest groups on medical informat- its in information professional societies

With these developments it seems appropriate to produce

this Perspectives at this time.

LOIS F. LUNIN

MARION J. BALL

About the Authors

Marion J. Ball, Ed.D., is associate vice president for information resources at the University of Maryland at Baltimore. She chaired the campus task force on informat- its and is active both nationally and internationally in the informatics field. Her concern with education of health

professionals is also reflected by her academic appoint- ments in the schools of medicine and nursing. Senior edi-

tor of Nursing Informatics: Where Caring and Technology Meet (Springer Verlag, 1988), she is now preparing a text designed to bring informatics into the hospital setting.

Judith V. Douglas holds a master of health sciences degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hy- giene and Public Health. Now associate director for infor- mation resources management, she has served on a number

of campus initiatives, including the integrated academic in- formation management systems (IAIMS) project and the

informatics task force.

John L. Zimmerman, D.D.S., is director for aca- demic computing and health informatics at the University of Maryland at Baltimore as well as assistant professor in the dental school’s division of informatics. He has pub- lished articles on informatics and edited a special issue of The Dental Clinics of North America, “Computer Applica-

tions in Dentistry.” Lois F. Lunin holds a master of science degree in in-

formation science from Drexel University and is adjunct

associate professor at Cornell University Medical College. She has taught and developed programs on information

and its communication for students in the health sciences

at university medical centers. Her several publications on education include a recent chapter on education and train- ing for information professionals, co-authored with Mari- anne Cooper, in the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (1989).

References

Blois, M. S. (1984). Information and medicine. Berkeley: University of

California.

Lindberg, D.A. B., & Schoolman. H. M. (1986). The National Library

of Medicine and medical informatics. The Wesrern Journal of Medi- tine, 145, 786-790.

Stead, W. W. (1987). What is medical informatics? MD Computing, 4,

14-15.

366 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE-September 1989