[Medical informatics--today and tomorrow].
The status of medical informatics, a comparatively new biomedical discipline beginning to develop in the second half of the 20th century, is described at the transition into the 21st century. The appearance of new information and communication technologies, among which Internet nas special importance, was a major impulse to the development of medical informatics in its different fields. Health information systems are integrating, while at the same time, by distribution of their parts, they become available to the individual healthcare user. These processes put the problems of interoperability and standardization into the focus of contemporary medical informatics. The electronic health record is recognized as a key instrument of modern healthcare systems, and its development and implementation are being planned at many places. Whereas the research and application of medical decision support systems are stagnating, new disciplines have emerged such as telemedicine, cybermedicine and bioinformatics. The perspectives of the future development of medical informatics are described. In the appendix, a chronology of the development of medical informatics from its beginning to the present time is given.
Skola narodnog zdravlja Andrija Stampar, Medicinski fakultet Sveucilista u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska. duro.dezelic@zg.internet.hr
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D008490:Medical Informatics / Q000639:trends*; D008491:Medical Informatics Applications