| Medical informatics is the application of information science and information technology to the theoretical and practical problems of biomedical research, clinical practice, and medical education. Although it is broadly interdisciplinary, its internal structure and the nature of its interactions with other disciplines have not been studied in depth. Co-occurrence analyses using classification codes and indexing terms assigned to medical informatics literature reveal interpretable internal subject structures, which differ between information science/information technology and biomedical perspectives. Highly visible topics within medical informatics include diagnostic imaging; decision-support systems; computing in general, expressed as biomedical computing, computing systems per se, data analysis and management, and human-computer interaction; artificial intelligence modeling; biophysics; biotechnology; and biomechanics. Underlying themes in the structure of medical informatics include knowledge discovery/knowledge management, information systems engineering/information system management, and biological investigations and applications. Further study of the role of bioinformatics within medical informatics is needed. |
