Health care is an information-based science. Much of clinical practice
involves gathering, synthesizing, and acting on information. Medical informatics
is the field concerned with the management and use of information in health
and biomedicine. This article focuses on the problems that motivate work in
this field, the emerging solutions, and the barriers that remain. It also
addresses the core themes that underlie all applications of medical informatics
and unify the scientific approaches across the field.