Toward a New Culture for Biomedical Informatics: Report of the 2001 ACMI Symposium

Abstract

For those of us who have dedicated our careers to medical informatics, it is easy to feel over-stimulated in the current times. Moore's Law has seemingly been generalized, beyond the hardware we use, to embrace every aspect of our professional lives. Opportunities to apply our science seem to double annually, in ways unforeseeable as recently as five years ago. A field that once was clearly focused on systems to support the care of hospitalized and clinic patients has extended its reach to health information resources for consumers, systems to enhance and protect public health, and systems that support research in genomics and proteomics. We have spawned subfields denoted by prefixes or qualifying phrases, such as “public health informatics,” to mark this trend. Moreover, a field that was solidly rooted in academic medical centers now finds professional representation in for-profit corporations both large and small, in government agencies, and in foundations and professional societies. The field has acquired a distinct entrepreneurial spirit, not at all unwelcome but somehow new and unfamiliar.