The writer Dr. RK Umesh Singh, is a REGIONAL MANAGER for SIEMENS, MEDICAL INSTRUMENTS SYSTEM in JEDDAH (KSA), since last 6yrs. SIEMENS is a global Multinational (GERMANY) Co.
When computers became available in the '50s medicine began to automate non- clinical activities
(e.g. billing) replace paper charts with computer hardware and software and even automate the cognitive
activities of clinicians (e.g. computer diagnosis).Physicians were excited by the prospect that computers
could address the problems caused by exponential growth of medical information by serving as
auxiliary brains. The emerging field of medical informatics has its roots in these early efforts and continues to pursue the original research problems as well as to look at an ever-expanding array of issues related
to information and medicine.
The field of medical informatics is concerned with the cognitive, information processing, and
communication tasks of medical practice, education and research. It is inherently an interdisciplinary field
drawing from medicine, computer science ,artificial intelligence, information science, cognitive
psychology and others. As is typical of an interdisciplinary field at its inception, early researchers were
not trained as medical informaticians.With time however professional associations developed (e.g. The
American medical Informatics Association), journals were born, departments of medical informatics
were founded, a text book written and it is now possible to obtain an advanced degree in medical
informatics in many Western institutions.
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