User Health Informatics Disciplines Construct

This paper uses literature survey, expert counseling method, comparative analysis and comprehensive induction to analyze concept of health information consumer,its characteristics and classification, analyze concept and scope of consumer health information, analyze definition of consumer health informatics, basis of consumer health informatics establishment, and its effect on biological-psychological-social medical model and physician-patient relationship, health care reform,patient rights and self-care. Based on these, author proposes that consumer health informatics is an independent branch of medical informatics and a new interdisciplinary discipline. It uses technologies and methods of information science to take knowledge and information of medical science, carry on consumer health information activities research and consumer health information service. Consumer health informatics and sociology, psychology, religious study, health communication, library science and information science and other disciplines have close relationship, its theoretical study and practical activities draws on classic theories and research methods of these disciplines. Based on general principles of disciplinary system, author proposes that disciplinary system of consumer health informatics consists of basic theory, research methods, technical system and application system. Basic theory of consumer health informatics has covered empowerment theory, basic theories of information need, basic theories of information behavior, and basic theories of information and information service. Research methods of consumer health informatics are diverse, mainly including survey research, experimental method and content analysis method. The technology system of consumer health informatics base on information infrastructure, including information organization technology, information storage technology, information transfer technology, information retrieval technology and information security technology. Consumer health informatics application system consists of service objects, service subjects, service contents, service modes and service managements, different service subjects provide services in different ways, so it is necessary to strengthen service management. In consumer health informatics professional construction, there is no independent consumer health informatics professional teaching activities, but in some universities in Europe and the United States, Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan consumer health informatics has been teaching as a formal course in different forms on different expertise areas.