Indivisibility and Variety of Medical Informatics

Abstract

SummaryIn recent editorials it has been pointed out that medical informatics, seen as comprehensive health care informatics, should be understood as the science of information processing and engineering of automated information systems within the health care system.Since the health care system as a whole is the object system of medical informatics, its object of cognition will have to be seen in computerized medical information systems or information systems as components of socio-technical and biological object systems. Because of that and especially in view of the rapidly growing possibilities of data processing technology, the question arises how our discipline can cope with the variety in research and education. This is the subject of this opinion paper.