What is Informatics?

Hi, my name is Mariel and this is my first blog ever.  My dad is an engineer, and when I was ~7 years old (in the early 1990’s) my house actually contained not one, but several computers.  In fact, my father worked on some of the original computers, the ones that were so large they took up an entire room and were only useful to do a complex math problem.  This being said, you may think that I’m computer savvy because I’ve had such a great opportunity to learn and experience new technology as it is invented.  WRONG! To be honest, I hate trying to learn how to use technology.  I get upset and cranky when I can’t figure something out and I always want to end up throwing or hitting whatever I’m using. 

When I first found out about blogging several years ago, I thought to myself “really??? I never want random people to read my thoughts.”  A couple of years later, twitter came out and then I thought “oh my g-d, can people just get a life and interact in person?”  Now, I’m in a class called ‘consumer health informatics’ where it’s actually an assignment to post blogs and tweets.  After learning about the subject, I realized blogging/tweeting can be so much more then a random person letting off steam.  That being said, this blog site will be based on my interaction on the things I come across in pharmacy that deals with ‘informatics.’

To be quite frank, I still don’t really understand the definition of “health informatics,” so if I say something wrong or off topic, please, PLEASE, feel free to let me know! And for those of you who are reading this (if anyone is reading this at all), the definition of health informatics is the "scientific field that deals with biomedical information, data, and knowledge - their storage, retrieval, and optimal use for problem solving and decision making. It accordingly touches on all basic and applied fields in biomedical science and is closely tied to modern information technologies, notably in the areas of computing and communication (medical computer science)" ("Health Informatics").

            When I think of informatics, not much comes to mind.  In my blogs to come, I will be introducing you to pharmacy informatics that I find on a daily basis.  Since I currently don’t quite understand the definition of informatics, by searching for tools that fall in this category, I will hopefully open a door to a greater understanding/appreciation of technology and the knowledge that wouldn’t be as accessible otherwise.

Articles cited: "Open Clinical." Health Informatics. Richard Thomson, 15 Feb 2010. Web. 18 Sep 2010. <http://www.openclinical.org/healthinformatics.html>.