Informatics is the use of data-centric approaches to solve complex problems. This transdisciplinary field brings together doctors, scientists, professors, researchers and more in the pursuit of innovations in the healthcare and life sciences fields.
Informatics offers a way to harness and manage big data, leading to a number of benefits including an accelerated rate of scientific discovery, improved clinical decision making and the ability to promote healthy behaviors at a population level. This new knowledge is generated through the capturing, storing, mining and analyzing of diverse data resources — from DNA sequences to electronic medical records.
At I2DB, we’re using this data to transform research, education and patient care. Here are our areas of focus within informatics:
Translational Bioinformatics
” … the development of storage, analytic and interpretive methods to optimize the transformation of increasingly voluminous biomedical data into proactive, predictive, preventative and participatory health.”
Source: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association
Learning Healthcare Systems
“Every day, physicians and other clinicians around the country record millions of observations and treatment decisions in electronic medical records — creating a vast repository of information that is increasingly being used by clinical researchers to answer practical questions about the safety, effectiveness and value of healthcare services. As these researchers turn data from routine clinical care into knowledge and knowledge into guidance for physicians at the point of care, they help create what the Institute of Medicine has called ‘learning health care systems’”
Source: Institute of Medicine
Population Health Informatics
“Population Health Informatics (PopHI) integrates aspects of public health, clinical informatics and healthcare delivery with the target of improving healthcare system effectiveness and the well-being of communities and populations.”
Source: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association