Abstract
This issue of the journal starts with a leading article about the tangled taxonomies within our discipline.1 In this issue explores this further, looking at how a clear taxonomy for our discipline might improve our understanding of what is and, perhaps more importantly, is not part of health informatics. Taxonomies, the classification or grouping of things, are well developed for living things. Many of the groupings of plants and animals take a phylogenetic perspective, namely they make the assumption that there was evolution from a common ancestry. Darwin was one of the first known to have sketched out a ‘Tree of life’ to illustrate this common ancestry of many life forms.2 We should, as an informatics community, better define the components of what makes up our discipline, as this would help us define and explain what we do. Creating such a taxonomy should not necessarily constrain us. Darwin recognised that some branches of the tree of life might die and fall away:
Highlights
The leading article describing the tangled taxonomies in health informatics lists some of the taxonomies that have been applied to health informatics.[1]
Dimension 2: Taxonomy to capture the scope of health and health informatics medical subject headings (MeSHs) categories Analytical, diagnostic, therapeutic techniques and equipment
Publication type Subheadings Technology and food and beverages category. In this issue of Informatics in Primary Care, we publish three papers that report how younger age appears to be associated with better uptake or use of IT
Summary
This issue of the journal starts with a leading article about the tangled taxonomies within our discipline.[1]. Darwin was one of the first known to have sketched out a ‘Tree of life’ to illustrate this common ancestry of many life forms.[2] We should, as an informatics community, better define the components of what makes up our discipline, as this would help us define and explain what we do. Creating such a taxonomy should not necessarily constrain us. Some of the failed major implementations in informatics, many of which are described in the pages of this journal,[3] might be usefully conceptualised in this way
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