Development Of Health Informatics Research Articles

Digital health as an enabler for hospital@home: A rising trend or just a vision?

Hospital@home is a model of healthcare, where healthcare professionals actively treat patients in their homes for conditions that may otherwise require hospitalization. Similar models of care have been implemented in jurisdictions around the world over the past few years. However, there are new developments in health informatics including digital health and participatory health informatics that may have an impact on hospital@home approaches. This study aims to identify the current state of implementation of emerging concepts into the hospital@home research and models of care; to identify strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with the models of care; and to suggest a research agenda. We employed two research methodologies, namely, a literature review and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. The literature from the last 10 years was collected from PubMed using the search string "hospital at home" OR "care at home" OR "patient at home." Relevant information was extracted from the included articles. Title and abstract review were conducted on 1,371 articles. The full-text review was conducted on 82 articles. Data were extracted from 42 articles that met our review criteria. Most of the studies originated from the United States and Spain. Several medical conditions were considered. The use of digital tools and technologies was rarely reported. In particular, innovative approaches such as wearables or sensor technologies were rarely used. The current landscape of hospital@home models of care simply delivers hospital care in the patient's home. Tools or approaches from taking a participatory health informatics design approach involving a range of stakeholders (such as patients and their caregivers) were not reported in the literature reviewed. In addition, emerging technologies supporting mobile health applications, wearable technologies, and remote monitoring were rarely discussed. There are multiple benefits and opportunities associated with hospital@home implementations. There are also threats and weaknesses associated with the use of this model of care. Some weaknesses could be addressed by using digital health and wearable technologies to support patient monitoring and treatment at home. Employing a participatory health informatics approach to design and implementation could help to ensure the acceptance of such care models.

Suicide in services for mental health and substance use: A national hybrid registry surveillance system.

Suicide is strongly associated with mental health and substance use disorders, which makes mental health- and substance misuse services important areas for suicide prevention. The aim of The Norwegian Surveillance System for Suicide in Mental Health and Substance Use Services is to describe all suicide deaths in Norway that occur within one year after contact with mental health and substance misuse services. The study uses a hybrid registry case series design. It consists of a yearly linkage between the Norwegian Cause of Death Registry and the Norwegian Patient Registry, which is linked with a questionnaire. The linkage is conducted by using a cryptographic hash function of the deceased's personal id, thus ensuring that the project can link data across sources without the use of directly identifiable information. This indirect linkage ensures the deceased's confidentiality. Moreover, the The Norwegian Surveillance System for Suicide shows how administratively collected data can be harnessed and used for surveillance. Both use of hybrid registry designs and linkage through cryptographic hash functions might contribute to the development of health informatics as well as quality improvement in health care.

Translational health technology and system schemes: enhancing the dynamics of health informatics

Translational health technology and design schemes reflect certain themes in systems approach and its dynamics. This paper discusses these aligned ideas in view of their value to translational design processes. The ideas embedded in these two approaches are considered in the light of critical questions associated with the development of health informatics. Health care processes for patients might be very fragmented. Synergy thinking is required in all areas of design: it is crucial to understand the theoretical frames and issues associated with focus environments, administration, and cost policy. By internalizing common nuances in these approaches, designers can ease the interaction and communication between experts from different backgrounds. Synergistic thinking aids designers in health informatics to produce more sophisticated products. Maturing in recognizing the whole aids to take into account “the very essentials” more easily. These skills are very vital in prioritizing development substances in health informatics area.

DEVELOPMENT HISTORY AND THE CURRENT STATE OF PROFESSIONAL TRAINING IN HEALTH INFORMATICS IN CANADA

MUKAN Nataliya – PhD hab. (Education), Professor of Pedagogy and Innovative Education Department, Lviv Polytechnic National University, 12 Stepan Bandera Str., Lviv, 79013, Ukraine E-mail address: nataliya.v.mukan@lpnu.ua ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4396-3408 ResearcherID: https://publons.com/researcher/1739818/nataliya-mukan/ KOBRYN Nadiya – Postgraduate student of Pedagogy and Innovative Education Department, Lviv Polytechnic National University, 12 Stepan Bandera Str., Lviv, 79013, Ukraine E-mail address: nadiia.z.kobryn@lpnu.ua ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1960-1212 ResearcherID: https://publons.com/researcher/2018398/nadiia-kobryn/ ZAPOTICHNA Mariya – Postgraduate student of Pedagogy and Innovative Education Department, Lviv Polytechnic National University, 12 Stepan Bandera Str., Lviv, 79013, Ukraine E-mail address: zapotichnam@gmail.com ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1504-9136 To cite this article: Mukan, N., Kobryn, N., & Zapotichna, M. (2020). Development history and the current state of professional training in health informatics in Canada. Human Studies. Series of Pedagogy , 10/42, 62‒75. doi: https://doi.org/10.24919/2413-2039.10/42.186894 Article history Received: November 21, 2019 Received in revised form: December 10, 2019 Accepted: March 11, 2020 Available online: April 28, 2020 Journal homepage: http://lssp.dspu.edu.ua/ p-ISSN 2313-2094 e-ISSN 2413-2039 © 2020 The Authors. Human studies. Series of Pedagogy published by Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University & Open Journal Systems. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ ). The article studies the history and the current state of the professional training in health informatics in Canada. The specifics of healthcare informatization in Canada as a precondition for its formation are analyzed. At its initial stages, the computer technology was implemented into the provincial and territorial healthcare institutions slowly and unevenly. The computerization policy was decentralized, and this did not promote an effective medical information exchange. Thus, at the beginning of the 2000s, Canada set course for the centralized healthcare informatization. It required a qualified workforce and became a catalyst for the development of professional training in health informatics in Canada. A retrospective analysis of the professional training in health informatics development in Canada is conducted. The research reveals that in its development professional training in health informatics has gone through the pre-institutional phase (the 1960s – 1980), which laid the basis for the appearance and further development of professional training in health informatics, and the institutional phase (1981 – till present time), when it began to be implemented into the Canadian higher educational institutions. The characteristic features of the institutional phase include the rise of health informatics as an academic speciality; the conceptualization of professional training in health informatics; the rapid increase in the number of health informatics professional programs in the mid 2000s; the unification of methodological, scientific framework for training health informatics professionals. The current state of the professional training in health informatics in Canada is studied. It is concluded that the Canadian system of the health informatics professional training is built on the principles of degree education and life-long learning. The educational process is organized in such a way that future health informatics professionals can receive a credential at different levels of the higher education, in particular a health informatics diploma or certificate in the non-degree granting institutions and Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD degrees at universities. The analysis of the professional training content in health informatics enables to state that its development depends on the level of the higher education and is characterized by various combinations of academic disciplines in the health informatics curriculum within three knowledge domains – information sciences, health sciences, and management. Acknowledgments. Sincere thanks to Professor Mariya Chepil, the Head of General Pedagogy and Preschool Education Department of Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University. Funding. The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Quality and Safety in eHealth: The Need to Build the Evidence Base.

Research in the area of health technology safety has demonstrated that technology may both improve patient safety and introduce new types of technology-induced errors. Thus, there is a need to publish safety science literature to develop an evidence-based research base, on which we can continually develop new, safe technologies and improve patient safety. The aim of this viewpoint is to argue for the need to advance evidence-based research in health informatics, so that new technologies can be designed, developed, and implemented for their safety prior to their use in health care. This viewpoint offers a historical perspective on the development of health informatics and safety literature in the area of health technology. I argue for the need to conduct safety studies of technologies used by health professionals and consumers to develop an evidence base in this area. Ongoing research is necessary to improve the quality and safety of health technologies. Over the past several decades, we have seen health informatics emerge as a discipline, with growing research in the field examining the design, development, and implementation of different health technologies and new challenges such as those associated with the quality and safety of technology use. Future research will need to focus on how we can continually extend safety science in this area. There is a need to integrate evidence-based research into the design, development, and implementation of health technologies to improve their safety and reduce technology-induced errors.

Development of Health Informatics for Caring for Children in Occupational Therapy Service Communities

Health Informatics (HI) is an integration of health information and technology to be improving levels of efficiency in Occupational Therapy (OT) care managers in the community. The purpose of this study was to develop HI in the community for care managers caring for children from birth to 6 years old. Fifteen participants were occupational therapists, who worked as care managers in the community. The research instrument was a questionnaire that comprised 22 items in 4 aspects including requirement, function, usability and security. The HI system in this study comprised 6 parts such as log in, data display and summary, history, assessment, intervention and follow-up. Efficiency of the HI system was at the good level from the perspective of users (4.30±0.58). When the efficacy of aspects was considered, the result found that usability was presented at the high level and had the highest mean, next to security, function and requirement, consecutively.

Professional development of health informatics in Northern Ireland.

This paper addresses the assessment and verification of health informatics professional competencies. Postgraduate provision in Health Informatics was targeted at informatics professionals working full-time in the National Health Service, in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. Many informatics health service positions do not require a formal informatics background, and as we strive for professionalism, a recognized qualification provides important underpinning. The course, delivered from a computing perspective, builds upon work-based achievement and provides insight into emerging technologies associated with the 'connected health' paradigm. The curriculum was designed with collaboration from the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care ICT Training Group. Material was delivered by blended learning using a virtual learning environment and face-to-face sessions. Professional accreditation was of high importance. The aim was to provide concurrent qualifications: a postgraduate certificate, awarded by the University of Ulster and a professional certificate validated and accredited by a professional body comprising experienced health informatics professionals. Providing both qualifications puts significant demands upon part-time students, and a balance must be achieved for successful completion.

Implementing Burundi's national e-health enterprise architecture: past, present and future

Background and purpose : The Ministry of Health (MoH) of Burundi initiated in 2014 the development of a national e-health enterprise architecture aiming to reclaim its leadership in this field and to better align existing and future ICT implementations in the health domain with the strategic options defined by the National Plan for Health Development (PNDS). Methods : The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) was used as a method for developing Burundi’s e-health enterprise architecture. A first part of the study consisted of a detailed analysis of regulatory documents and strategic plans related to the Burundian health system and health informatics development. In a second part, field visits and semi-structured interviews were organized with a representative sample of relevant health structures throughout the country. Thorough analysis of human resources, business processes, hardware, software, communication and networking infrastructure provided both a baseline and a target e-health situation. Finally, a strategic document was developed for planning the way forward for filling the functional and technical gaps that had been identified. Results : the preliminary study demonstrated the donor driven unequal distribution of hardware equipment over health administration components and health facilities. Internet connectivity was problematic and few health oriented business applications had found their way to the Burundian health system. Paper based instruments remained predominant in Burundi’s health administration. The study also identified a series of problems introduced by the uncoordinated development of health ICT in Burundi such as the lack of standardization, data security risks, varying data quality, inadequate ICT infrastructures, an unregulated e-health sector and insufficient human capacity. The later architecture development effort resulted in the production and validation of a national e-health strategy for Burundi for the period 2015-2019 (PNDIS). This strategy has been put into implementation by the Ministry of Public Health and Fight against Aids since 2015 with the help of the country’s development partners. Conclusions : the results demonstrated the challenging situation of the Burundian health information system but also revealed a series of important opportunities for the future: a political will to reclaim MoH leadership in the health information management domain based on the PNDIS, the readiness to develop e-health education and training programs and the opportunity to capitalize the experiences with DHIS2 deployment, results based financing monitoring and evaluation with OpenRBF and hospital information management systems implementation based on OpenClinic GA. Keywords e-Health enterprise architecture, TOGAF, Health information systems, Burundi

Information Security Requirements of Customized Mobile Health Applications

The purpose of this study is to contribute to creating awareness of information security requirements in customized health applications. The study refers to how developing mobile applications affect information security in accordance with the developments in health informatics and evaluates the aspects of network and information security in the health-related systems as well as attacks and types of attacks. Today, health information systems are modeled in integrated systems as application, control, tracking and warning systems. These systems have been turning into systems that collect private information as long as they have patients on one side. With this approach, the concept of mobility has become a must in systems because of the patient. Data communication can be performed from machine to machine (M2M) between the systems without the human factor. This ensures the communication of accurate and timely data. This study contributes to health administrators’ awareness of information security in health with a different point of view.

Biometrics' new identity--measuring more physical and biological traits: Research into the characteristics that are unique to an individual is addressing the need to correctly identify people in a variety of medical, social and security contexts.

There is no need to remember complex combinations of random numbers and characters. From now on, you are the password: your fingerprint, face, iris, gait or odour—any of your potentially unique attributes—can theoretically be used to identify you. This is the idea behind biometrics, which was once confined to the realm of spy movies and high‐security facilities, but is now increasingly common in everyday security checks at borders, for secure payments and logging in to mobile devices. Beyond security, though, biometrics technology is also driving and enabling other applications that include forensic science, data sharing over networks and reducing identification errors in hospitals. > Biometrics is essentially ready for mass application, as the success of the Indian Aadhaar programme demonstrates. While fingerprints and retina patterns are the most well‐known biometric identifiers, they are not the only characteristics that can be used for biometric identification. Physical traits such as the shape of the face, hand or ear, the vasculature in the finger or DNA—so‐called hard biometrics—as well as behavioural characteristics such as gait, signature, voice and typing patterns can all be used to identify individuals (Fig 1). Another large and rapidly expanding category—which includes characteristics such as skin or eye colour, height, weight and tattoos—is known as “soft biometrics” and provides less distinctive, less categorical information, but has the advantage that such traits can be measured from a distance without cooperation from the subject. Even body odour is being actively explored as a practicable biometric identifier (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140204073823.htm). Figure 1. Examples of biometric traits. (A) Fingerprints, palm prints, hand vasculature, hand shape and signature. (B) Face, DNA, sclera (on the eyeball), ear shape and typing patterns (keystroke dynamics). (C) Teeth (forensic odontology), gait, voice or speech, iris and retina. Some of these traits—fingerprints, palm prints, face, voice, teeth, ear shape and DNA—are also used in forensics. Reproduced with permission …

An analysis of application of health informatics in Traditional Medicine: A review of four Traditional Medicine Systems

ObjectiveThis paper shall first investigate the informatics areas and applications of the four Traditional Medicine systems – Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Ayurveda, Traditional Arabic and Islamic Medicine and Traditional Malay Medicine. Then, this paper shall examine the national informatics infrastructure initiatives in the four respective countries that support the Traditional Medicine systems. Challenges of implementing informatics in Traditional Medicine Systems shall also be discussed. MethodsThe literature was sourced from four databases: Ebsco Host, IEEE Explore, Proquest and Google scholar. The search term used was “Traditional Medicine”, “informatics”, “informatics infrastructure”, “traditional Chinese medicine”, “Ayurveda”, “traditional Arabic and Islamic medicine”, and “traditional malay medicine”. A combination of the search terms above was also executed to enhance the searching process. A search was also conducted in Google to identify miscellaneous books, publications, and organization websites using the same terms. ResultsAmongst major advancements in TCM and Ayurveda are bioinformatics, development of Traditional Medicine databases for decision system support, data mining and image processing. Traditional Chinese Medicine differentiates itself from other Traditional Medicine systems with documented ISO Standards to support the standardization of TCM. Informatics applications in Traditional Arabic and Islamic Medicine are mostly ehealth applications that focus more on spiritual healing, Islamic obligations and prophetic traditions. Literature regarding development of health informatics to support Traditional Malay Medicine is still insufficient. Major informatics infrastructure that is common in China and India are automated insurance payment systems for Traditional Medicine treatment. National informatics infrastructure in Middle East and Malaysia mainly cater for modern medicine. Other infrastructure such as telemedicine and hospital information systems focus its implementation in modern medicine or are not implemented and strategized at a national level to support Traditional Medicine. ConclusionInformatics may not be able to address all the emerging areas of Traditional Medicine because the concepts in Traditional Medicine system of medicine are different from modern system, though the aim may be same, i.e., to give relief to the patient. Thus, there is a need to synthesize Traditional Medicine systems and informatics with involvements from modern system of medicine. Future research works may include filling the gaps of informatics areas and integrate national informatics infrastructure with established Traditional Medicine systems.

Developing a national e-health strategy for DR Congo: a preliminary analysis of business needs, existing information systems and solutions

Background and purpose: In order to reclaim its leadership and to better align existing and future ICT implementations in the health domain with the strategic options defined by the National Plan for Health Development, the Ministry of Health (MoH) of the DRC initiated early 2014 the development of a national e-health enterprise architecture. During the preliminary phase of the architecture development cycle, an initial analysis of human resources, business processes, hardware, software, communication and networking infrastructure related to health information management, had to be established. Methods: A first part of the study consisted of a detailed analysis of regulatory documents and strategic plans related to the Congolese health system and health informatics development. In a second part, field visits and semi-structured interviews were organized with a representative sample of relevant health structures throughout the country Results: The study demonstrates the large number of business needs that must be addressed by e-health initiatives. It also documents the donor driven unequal distribution of hardware equipment over health administration components and health facilities. Internet connectivity remains problematic and few health oriented business applications found their way to the Congolese health system. Paper based instruments remain predominant in DRC’s health administration. The study also identified a series of problems introduced by the uncoordinated development of health ICT in DRC such as the lack of standardization, data security risks, poor data quality, inadequate ICT infrastructures, an unregulated e-health sector and insufficient human capacity. Conclusions: The results confirm the precarious situation of the Congolese health information system but they also expose a number of bright spots that provide hope for the future: a political will to reclaim MoH leadership in the health information management domain, the readiness to develop e-health education and training programs and the opportunity to capitalize the experiences from early successes with DHIS2 and a number of hospital information management systems.

A pathologist hitchhiker's guide to informatics

The contemporary practice of pathology is heavily reliant upon information systems. These systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated and College Fellows are frequently required to have input on their design, selection, implementation and evaluation. Laboratories are adopting decision support technologies to support workflow management and clinical interpretation of pathology tests. The computationally intensive field of bioinformatics is growing rapidly especially in genomics laboratories while statistics, another informatics discipline, has always been an important part of Fellowship training. College Fellows have a professional duty of care, and also carry ethical and medico-legal responsibility, for the efficacy, reliability, safety and security of such systems. Significantly, the development of Health Informatics also proceeds apace in the wider medical community. Data mining tools, social media and decision support are expected to improve health resource utilisation, evidence-based practice, and clinical effectiveness. These tools will also become widely deployed as patients and health consumers have more control over health service delivery and expect an improved experience in their contact with the health system. The contemporary practice of pathology is heavily reliant upon information systems. These systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated and College Fellows are frequently required to have input on their design, selection, implementation and evaluation. Laboratories are adopting decision support technologies to support workflow management and clinical interpretation of pathology tests. The computationally intensive field of bioinformatics is growing rapidly especially in genomics laboratories while statistics, another informatics discipline, has always been an important part of Fellowship training. College Fellows have a professional duty of care, and also carry ethical and medico-legal responsibility, for the efficacy, reliability, safety and security of such systems. Significantly, the development of Health Informatics also proceeds apace in the wider medical community. Data mining tools, social media and decision support are expected to improve health resource utilisation, evidence-based practice, and clinical effectiveness. These tools will also become widely deployed as patients and health consumers have more control over health service delivery and expect an improved experience in their contact with the health system.

A Short History of Medical Informatics in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The health informatics profession in Bosnia and Herzegovina has relatively long history. Thirty five years from the introduction of the first automatic manipulation of data, thirty years from the establishment of Society for Medical Informatics BiH, twenty years from the establishment of the Scientific journal “Acta Informatica Medica (Acta Inform Med”, indexed in PubMed, PubMed Central Scopus, Embase, etc.), twenty years on from the establishment of the first Cathedra for Medical Informatics on Biomedical Faculties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ten years on from the introduction of the method of “Distance learning” in medical curriculum. The author of this article is eager to mark the importance of the above mentioned Anniversaries in the development of Health informatics in Bosnia and Herzegovina and have attempted, very briefly, to present the most significant events and persons with essential roles throughout this period.

Giving Patients Choice and Control: Health Informatics on the Patient Journey

In modern society, people expect to be actively informed and engaged in decisions about their own health care. Developments in health informatics for patients are increasingly enabling digital solutions to supporting a culture of shared decision making between patients and clinicians. In England, the national patient portal NHS Choices has pioneered patient access to information, with the objectives of achieving significant volumes of use and delivering measurable benefits for patients and the healthcare system. Opportunities for patients to use online information and transactions exist along the patient pathway, utilising a variety of methods including using online symptom checkers to manage minor ailments, choosing health services informed by metrics about the quality of service provided and patient comments, through to care delivered online. Independent evaluation of NHS Choices has indicated that the website is effective in reducing primary care consultations for minor ailments through providing information on appropriate self care. Further research is demonstrating that the collective voice of patients, expressed through online ratings and comments on care received, has a good correlation with more objective, quantitative measures of provider quality. NHS Choices has achieved high volumes of public use (15 million visits a month) and positive impacts for patients and the health care system. A new information strategy for health and social care in England published in 2012 sets the way ahead for the future of informatics for patients and the public.

Health Informatics Design for Assisted Diagnosis of Subclinical Atherosclerosis, Structural, and Functional Arterial Age Calculus and Patient-Specific Cardiovascular Risk Evaluation

Traditional methods used to assess cardiovascular risk (i.e., the Framingham Risk Score) exhibit clear limitations. To aid in patient-specific risk stratification and diagnosis it has been proposed to evaluate noninvasively structural and functional arterial parameters. A National Public University Center (CUiiDARTE) was created in Uruguay with the aim of developing and applying strategies to improve cardiovascular risk stratification and subclinical vascular disease detection. To this end a health informatics approach and tool was designed, developed, and implemented in CUiiDARTE. Its goals were to: 1) promote screening for subclinical atherosclerosis, 2) develop a centralized database to store information obtained noninvasively from anywhere in our country, 3) develop a biomathematical model integrating values for arterial structure and function into traditional cardiovascular risk assessment, 4) generate a detailed and comprehensive report for the specialist comparing patient data with reference data from the healthy population, 5) generate a similar report (using a structural and functional arterial age calculator) for the patients assessing the state of their arteries. In this paper, we present the main characteristics of the CUiiDARTE health informatics development.

Why the ‘reason for encounter’ should be incorporated in the analysis of outcome of care

In the traditional medical model, the diagnosis takes a central stage in the delineation of treatment and care. The diagnosis as the determinant of the response to patients1 has been the general line of medical education,2 is at the core of most evidence-based guidelines and protocols,3 and shapes the payment of physicians’ performance.4 Since its renaissance in the 1960s, general practice has questioned the narrow focus on the diagnosis as the single determinant of professional performance and pursued a person-centred, holistic approach of health care;5,6 diseases do not come in isolation but occur in the context of an individual with the disease, and it is to this broader context that health care has to respond. Yet, despite the growing international support of people at the centre of health care, professional performance is mainly regulated and awarded in relation to the diagnosis, disregarding the broader individual and social context of diseases, even in countries with a long and strong primary care tradition.3,7 Person-centredness should be part of every consultation. Clarifying the patient perspective parallel to the health problem can be a practical way of achieving this. In this article we call on the discipline of general practice to clarify patients’ perspectives in a systematic way, in patient care and research. We argue that patients’ reasons to seek medical care reflect their personal needs and expectations, and we illustrate how the use of the International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC)8 can help better understand the process and outcome of care. ICPC was a major step in the development of health informatics for primary care, by incorporating different aspects alongside the classification of health problems.9 For this …

Health Informatics for Development: a Threepronged Strategy of Partnerships, Standards, and Mobile Health

Describe the issues surrounding health informatics in developing countries and the challenges faced by practitioners in building internal capacity. From these issues, the authors propose cost-effective strategies that can fast track health informatics development in these low to medium income countries (LMICs). The authors conducted a review of literature and consulted key opinion leaders who have experience with health informatics implementations around the world. Despite geographic and cultural differences, many LMICs share similar challenges and opportunities in developing health informatics. Partnerships, standards, and inter-operability are well known components of successful informatics programs. Establishing partnerships can be comprised of formal inter-institutional collaborations on training and research, collaborative open source software development, and effective use of social networking. Lacking legacy systems, LMICs can discuss standards and inter-operability more openly and have greater potential for success. Lastly, since cellphones are pervasive in developing countries, they can be leveraged as access points for delivering and documenting health services in remote under-served areas. Mobile health or mHealth gives LMICs a unique opportunity to leapfrog through most issues that have plagued health informatics in developed countries. By employing this proposed roadmap, LMICs can now develop capacity for health informatics using appropriate and cost-effective technologies.

The Jubilee of Medical Informatics in Bosnia and Herzegovina - 20 Years Anniversary

CONFLICT OF INTEREST: NONE DECLAREDLast two years, the health informatics profession celebrated five jubilees in Bosnia and Herzegovina: thirty years from the introduction of the first automatic manipulation of data, twenty years from the establishment of Society for Medical Informatics BiH, fifteen years from the establishment of the Scientific and Professional Journal of the Society for Medical Informatics of Bosnia and Herzegovina „Acta Informatica Medica“, fifteen years on from the establishment of the first Cathedra for Medical Informatics on Biomedical Faculties in Bosnia and Herzegovina and five years on from the introduction of the method of “Distance learning” in medical curriculum. The author of this article are eager to mark the importance of the above mentioned Anniversaries in the development of Health informatics in Bosnia and Herzegovina and have attempted, very briefly, to present the most significant events and persons with essential roles throughout this period.

Health Informatics in the Asia Pacific

The Asia Pacific region is one of the most vibrant and diverse geographical regions in the world. Therefore, growing health informatics is particularly challenging given the wide cultural, political and socio-economic diversity among countries in the region. But the diversity also presents test-bed opportunities for wide-ranging health informatics applications from telemedicine to clinical management systems and nationwide use of healthcare smart cards. Many of the projects are highly correlated with socio-economic development and national vision and commitment. Since 1994, the Asia Pacific Association for Medical Informatics (APAMI) has been instrumental in promoting health informatics awareness and development by facilitating regional and international networking. In the coming years, health informatics development in the Asia Pacific is expected to come of age given the presence of influential factors such as strong economic growth, rapid info-communication structural development and transformation of national healthcare systems and deliveries to leverage on high technology-based economies. (Journal of Korean Society of Medical Informatics 13-2, 67-75, 2007)