Informatics Methodology Research Articles

A methodology of informatics: the role of methodology in improvement of theory

The article has a propounding character. Based on methodological literature, the essence of the concept "methodology" is revealed, explaining the role of scientific methods in knowledge and the role of methodology in improving theory and research work in some fields of knowledge. The results of the literature analysis are considered a starting point for investigating the methodology of informatics. Currently, there is no developed system of philosophical, scientific, and general-theoretical principles that determine the program and methods for investigating the theory and methodology of informatics. Additionally, there is no established theory of method and scientific approach to the objective evaluation of practice. The absence of methodology is a major cause and effect of the crisis in contemporary information theory. We can only discuss the methods used in research work in the field of informatics. Special methods in informatics—such as statistical analysis of scientific documents, statistical analysis of references, and the method of ranking—are characterized. The main laws of informatics are discovered using these methods. A definition of the methodology of informatics and its main aims is put forward for discussion.

Employing Informatics Strategies in Alzheimer's Disease Research: A Review from Genetics, Multiomics, and Biomarkers to Clinical Outcomes.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a critical national concern, affecting 5.8 million people and costing more than $250 billion annually. However, there is no available cure. Thus, effective strategies are in urgent need to discover AD biomarkers for disease early detection and drug development. In this review, we study AD from a biomedical data scientist perspective to discuss the four fundamental components in AD research: genetics (G), molecular multiomics (M), multimodal imaging biomarkers (B), and clinical outcomes (O) (collectively referred to as the GMBO framework). We provide a comprehensive review of common statistical and informatics methodologies for each component within the GMBO framework, accompanied by the major findings from landmark AD studies. Our review highlights the potential of multimodal biobank data in addressing key challenges in AD, such as early diagnosis, disease heterogeneity, and therapeutic development. We identify major hurdles in AD research, including data scarcity and complexity, and advocate for enhanced collaboration, data harmonization, and advanced modeling techniques. This review aims to be an essential guide for understanding current biomedical data science strategies in AD research, emphasizing the need for integrated, multidisciplinary approaches to advance our understanding and management of AD.

The possibilities of using historical data on Tambov church monuments of the late 18th – first half of the 19th century in the development of an interactive map

Importance. A number of factors are considered: the possibility of providing relevant historical information to a wide audience, the use of modern technologies for analyzing and distributing historical information, and the significant interest of historians in working within the framework of the methodology used. The purpose of the study is to offer a resource for popularizing the church history of the region. The main sources are used in the work are plans of the city of Tambov and documents from the funds of the Tambov City Duma (16) and the Mezhevaya Chancellery (29) of the State Archive of the Tambov Region, some reference and visual materials, as well as a view of the city of Tambov in 1799.Research Methods. Both classical historical methods and the methodology of historical informatics are used.Results and Discussion. The relevance of modern information technologies use in scientific and educational activities is substantiated. A historiographical analysis of the problem has been carried out, which relates to the theoretical part of the study. The problems associateы with the localization of lost objects on modern maps and their solutions are described, which can be attributed to the practical part. Variants of references of the church history objects of Tambov city for an interactive map of the church history objects of Tambov at the end of the 18th – first half of the 19th century are proposed for consideration. The process of collecting and systematizing information for the formation of historical references of ancient religious buildings in Tambov: the Znamenskaya Church, the Church in the name of the Great Martyr Barbara and the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity is described.Conclusion. The main result of the study is the images demonstration of attaching cartographic, visual and descriptive data on the history of specific monuments of church history to maps.

Designing Sustainable Hydrophilic Interfaces via Feature Selection from Molecular Descriptors and Time-Domain Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Relaxation Curves.

Surface modification using hydrophilic polymer coatings is a sustainable approach for preventing membrane clogging due to foulant adhesion to water treatment membranes and reducing membrane-replacement frequency. Typically, both molecular descriptors and time-domain nuclear magnetic resonance (TD-NMR) data, which reveal physicochemical properties and polymer-chain dynamics, respectively, are required to predict the properties and understand the mechanisms of hydrophilic polymer coatings. However, studies on the selection of essential components from high-dimensional data and their application to the prediction of surface properties are scarce. Therefore, we developed a method for selecting features from combined high-dimensional molecular descriptors and TD-NMR data. The molecular descriptors of the monomers present in polyethylene terephthalate films were calculated using RDKit, an open-source chemoinformatics toolkit, and TD-NMR spectroscopy was performed over a wide time range using five-pulse sequences to investigate the mobility of the polymer chains. The model that analyzed the data using the random forest algorithm, after reducing the features using gradient boosting machine-based recursive feature elimination, achieved the highest prediction accuracy. The proposed method enables the extraction of important elements from both descriptors of surface properties and can contribute to the development of new sustainable materials and material-specific informatics methodologies encompassing multiple information modalities.

Learning from Non-Routine Events and Teamwork in Intensive Care Units: Challenges and Opportunities.

Patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) have profound and complex illnesses, often fraught with uncertainties in diagnoses, treatments, and care decisions. Clinicians often deviate from best practices to handle ICUs' myriad complexities and uncertainties. Non-routine events (NREs), defined as any aspect of care perceived by clinicians as deviations from optimal care, are latent and frequent safety threats that, if left unchecked, can be precursors to adverse events. Proper identification and analysis of NREs that represent latent safety threats have been proposed as a feasible and more effective approach for performance improvement than traditional root cause analysis for patient safety events. However, NRE studies to date have yet to show the holistic picture of NREs in the contexts of teamwork and time-dependent tasks that are frequently associated with NREs. NREs, an upstream interventional area to understand root causes, team performance, and human-computer interaction, still needs to be expanded. This article presents concepts of NREs, and the use of real-world data (RWD) and informatics methodology to investigate NREs in contexts and discusses the opportunities and challenges to enhance NREs research in teamwork and time-dependent tasks.

Glimpse of safety science development in China: A review of safety fundamental research and construction of six new postgraduate courses for safety majors by safety & security theory innovation and promotion Center of Central South University

After more than half a century of development, the safety discipline has accumulated many theories, methods, models, and principles, but these results are still relatively scattered in various fields, and have not formed a complete subject system. Furthermore, there remain many gaps in the foundations of safety science over the years, and there are few textbooks on safety fundamental theory that are usable by postgraduate students in safety majors. To fill the gaps, this paper introduces a project concerning fundamental safety research and the construction of textbooks and new courses on safety science theories for the postgraduate education of safety majors. These texts and courses were created by the Safety & Security Theory Innovation and Promotion Center of Central South University. The project depended upon a strategy of “innovating safety science theory, publishing a series of papers, writing postgraduate textbooks, setting up postgraduate courses, and popularizing them to universities all over China.” After persisting for over ten years, our research group published more than 200 papers (mostly in Chinese journals) and compiled these papers into 11 monographs or textbooks. These books were Principles of Safety & Security Science, Methodology of Safety Science, Safety Statistics, Safety & Security Informatics, Safety Culturology, and Safety Pedagogy, among others. Then, the corresponding courses were opened and matching teaching materials were built. Accordingly, these courses were popularized in many universities with safety majors in China. The above works have achieved remarkable effects and played an important role in the development of safety science. This review provides a glimpse of safety science development in China. Our experiences are also significant insofar as providing reference value for the basic research on safety science and talent training worldwide.

BNLoop-GAN: a multi-loop generative adversarial model on brain network learning to classify Alzheimer's disease.

Recent advancements in AI, big data analytics, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have revolutionized the study of brain diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD). However, most AI models used for neuroimaging classification tasks have limitations in their learning strategies, that is batch training without the incremental learning capability. To address such limitations, the systematic Brain Informatics methodology is reconsidered to realize evidence combination and fusion computing with multi-modal neuroimaging data through continuous learning. Specifically, we introduce the BNLoop-GAN (Loop-based Generative Adversarial Network for Brain Network) model, utilizing multiple techniques such as conditional generation, patch-based discrimination, and Wasserstein gradient penalty to learn the implicit distribution of brain networks. Moreover, a multiple-loop-learning algorithm is developed to combine evidence with better sample contribution ranking during training processes. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated through a case study on the classification of individuals with AD and healthy control groups using various experimental design strategies and multi-modal brain networks. The BNLoop-GAN model with multi-modal brain networks and multiple-loop-learning can improve classification performance.

The methodology of educational informatics in higher education


 The methodology of educational informatics in higher education

The Innovative Informatics Approaches of High-Throughput Technologies in Livestock: Spearheading the Sustainability and Resiliency of Agrigenomics Research.

For more than a decade, next-generation sequencing (NGS) has been emerging as the mainstay of agrigenomics research. High-throughput technologies have made it feasible to facilitate research at the scale and cost required for using this data in livestock research. Scale frameworks of sequencing for agricultural and livestock improvement, management, and conservation are partly attributable to innovative informatics methodologies and advancements in sequencing practices. Genome-wide sequence-based investigations are often conducted worldwide, and several databases have been created to discover the connections between worldwide scientific accomplishments. Such studies are beginning to provide revolutionary insights into a new era of genomic prediction and selection capabilities of various domesticated livestock species. In this concise review, we provide selected examples of the current state of sequencing methods, many of which are already being used in animal genomic studies, and summarize the state of the positive attributes of genome-based research for cattle (Bos taurus), sheep (Ovis aries), pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus), horses (Equus caballus), chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus), and ducks (Anas platyrhyncos). This review also emphasizes the advantageous features of sequencing technologies in monitoring and detecting infectious zoonotic diseases. In the coming years, the continued advancement of sequencing technologies in livestock agrigenomics will significantly influence the sustained momentum toward regulatory approaches that encourage innovation to ensure continued access to a safe, abundant, and affordable food supplies for future generations.

Low-cost high-resolution measurements of periodic motions with Arduino in physics teacher in-service education

In this paper, we would like to briefly illustrate the situation a physics teacher-to-be or a practising physics teacher has to face when assigning a role to modern experiments in his or her physics lessons. Afterwards, we would like to present good practices that suggest that computer-aided experimentation has entered public education in the country. We summarize the main aims and some results of the HAS Research Group of Technical Informatics Methodology in combining technical computer sciences with the education of physics. Finally, we present some typical ‘textbook experiments’ for basic conceptions of physics reconsidered using the Arduino platform and low-cost experiment setup.

Clinical decision support in the neonatal ICU

Clinical Decision Support (CDS) tools help the healthcare team diagnose, monitor, and treat patients more efficiently and consistently by executing clinical practice guidelines and recommendations. As a result, CDS has a direct impact on the delivery and healthcare outcomes. This review covers the fundamental concepts, as well as the infrastructure needed to create a CDS tool and examples of its use in the neonatal setting. This article also serves as a primer on what to think about when proposing the development of a new CDS tool, or when upgrading an existing one. We also highlight important elements that influence CDS development, such as informatics methodologies, data and device interoperability, and regulation.

The Solution is the Solution: Data-Driven Elucidation of Solution-to-Device Feature Transfer for π-Conjugated Polymer Semiconductors.

The advent of data analytics techniques and materials informatics provides opportunities to accelerate the discovery and development of organic semiconductors for electronic devices. However, the development of engineering solutions is limited by the ability to control thin-film morphology in an immense parameter space. The combination of high-throughput experimentation (HTE) laboratory techniques and data analytics offers tremendous avenues to traverse the expansive domains of tunable variables offered by organic semiconductor thin films. This Perspective outlines the steps required to incorporate a comprehensive informatics methodology into the experimental development of polymer-based organic semiconductor technologies. The translation of solution processing and property metrics to thin-film behavior is crucial to inform efficient HTE for data collection and application of data-centric tools to construct new process-structure-property relationships. We argue that detailed investigation of the solution state prior to deposition in conjunction with thin-film characterization will yield a deeper understanding of the physicochemical mechanisms influencing performance in π-conjugated polymer electronics, with data-driven approaches offering predictive capabilities previously unattainable via traditional experimental means.

An Analysis of Medical Informatics and Application of Computer-Aided Decision Support Framework

Due to the advent of technology in the medical sector, the future of the Computer-Aided Decision (CAD) is promising as a support system for the processing of images. Since there is significant results reported due to the application of diagnostic radiology in the healthcare facility, radiologists are looking forward to enhancing medical and bioinformatics using CAD. Medical evaluations and trials have been done over the past few decades to aid in the optimization of accurate programs and evaluate the real contributions of CAD in the medical informatics interpretation procedures. Health experts and radiologists utilizing patient outputs from fundamental application of CAD are placed in the best position to focus on the final decisions concerning the performance of patients and diagnosis. However, researches have shown that the computer outputs require not projecting significant general accuracy compared to a certain radiologist to enhance patients’ performance. The volume and measure of the present patient data including their complexity to enhance the process of making proper healthcare decisions while making it problematic for healthcare practitioners and physicians to facilitate the management of patients. This condition calls for the usage of biomedical informatics methodologies to effectively process information, create biomedical implementations and informatics frameworks for CAD support systems. With that regard, this paper evaluates the medical and bioinformatics based on the application of CAD systems. It further projects on the applications of the systems, their application guidelines and techniques. The paper ends with the analysis of the future problems and directions of the CAD support framework.

Informatics Methodology Used in the Web-Based Portal of the NASCITA Cohort Study: Development and Implementation Study.

BackgroundMany diseases occurring in adults can be pinned down to early childhood and birth cohorts are the optimal means to study this connection. Birth cohorts have contributed to the understanding of many diseases and their risk factors.ObjectiveTo improve the knowledge of the health status of Italian children early on and how it is affected by social and health determinants, we set up a longitudinal, prospective, national-level, population-based birth cohort, the NASCITA study (NAscere e creSCere in ITAlia). The main aim of this cohort is to evaluate physical, cognitive, and psychological development; health status; and health resource use in the first 6 years of life in newborns, and potential associated factors. A web-based system was set up with the aim to host the cohort; provide ongoing information to pediatricians and to families; and facilitate accurate data input, monitoring, and analysis. This article describes the informatics methodology used to set up and maintain the NASCITA cohort with its web-based platform, and provides a general description of the data on children aged over 7 months.MethodsFamily pediatricians were contacted for participation in the cohort and enrolled newborns from April 2019 to July 2020 at their first well-child visit. Information collected included basic data that are part of those routinely collected by the family pediatricians, but also parental data, such as medical history, characteristics and lifestyle, and indoor and outdoor environment. A specific web portal for the NASCITA cohort study was developed and an electronic case report form for data input was created and tested. Interactive data charts, including growth curves, are being made available to pediatricians with their patients’ data. Newsletters covering the current biomedical literature on child cohorts are periodically being put up for pediatricians, and, for parents, evidence-based information on common illnesses and problems in children.ResultsThe entire cohort population consists of 5166 children, with 139 participating pediatricians, distributed throughout Italy. The number of children enrolled per pediatrician ranged from 1 to 100. The 5166 enrolled children represent 66.55% (5166/7763) of the children born in all of 2018 covered by the same pediatricians participating in the cohort. The number of children aged over 7 months at the time of these analyses, and for whom the most complete data were available upon initial analyses, was 4386 (2226/4381 males [50.81%] and 142/4370 twins [3.25%]). The age of the mothers at birth of the 4386 children ranged from 16 to 54 years. Most newborns’ mothers (3758/4367, 86.05%) were born in Italy, followed by mothers born in Romania (101/4367, 2.31%), Albania (75/4367, 1.72%), and Morocco (60/4367, 1.37%). Concerning the newborns, 138/4386 (3.15%) were born with malformations and 352/4386 (8.03%) had a disease, most commonly neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (n=52), neonatal jaundice (n=46), and neonatal hypoglycemia (n=45).ConclusionsThe NASCITA cohort is well underway and the population size will permit significant conclusions to be drawn. The key role of pediatricians in obtaining clinical data directly, along with the national-level representativity, will make the findings even more solid. In addition to promoting accurate data input, the multiple functions of the web portal, with its interactive platform, help maintain a solid relationship with the pediatricians and keep parents informed and interested in participating.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT03894566; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03894566

Feasibility study of hospital antimicrobial stewardship analytics using electronic health records.

BackgroundHospital antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programmes are multidisciplinary initiatives to optimize antimicrobial use. Most hospitals depend on time-consuming manual audits to monitor clinicians’ prescribing. But much of the information needed could be sourced from electronic health records (EHRs).ObjectivesTo develop an informatics methodology to analyse characteristics of hospital AMS practice using routine electronic prescribing and laboratory records.MethodsFeasibility study using electronic prescribing, laboratory and clinical coding records from adult patients admitted to six specialities at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, UK (September 2017–August 2018). The study involved: (i) a review of AMS standards of care; (ii) their translation into concepts measurable from commonly available EHRs; and (iii) a pilot application in an EHR cohort study (n = 61679 admissions).ResultsWe developed data modelling methods to characterize antimicrobial use (antimicrobial therapy episode linkage methods, therapy table, therapy changes). Prescriptions were linked into antimicrobial therapy episodes (mean 2.4 prescriptions/episode; mean length of therapy 5.8 days), enabling several actionable findings. For example, 22% of therapy episodes for low-severity community-acquired pneumonia were congruent with prescribing guidelines, with a tendency to use broader-spectrum antibiotics. Analysis of therapy changes revealed IV to oral therapy switching was delayed by an average 3.6 days (95% CI: 3.4–3.7). Microbial cultures were performed prior to treatment initiation in just 22% of antibacterial prescriptions. The proposed methods enabled fine-grained monitoring of AMS practice down to specialities, wards and individual clinical teams by case mix, enabling more meaningful peer comparison.ConclusionsIt is feasible to use hospital EHRs to construct rapid, meaningful measures of prescribing quality with potential to support quality improvement interventions (audit/feedback to prescribers), engagement with front-line clinicians on optimizing prescribing, and AMS impact evaluation studies.

Theoretical and applied aspects of creating a unified information accounting system of pharmaceutical and medical products in Ukraine

In modern conditions of reforming the Ukrainian Health Care system based on the introduction of innovative digital information technologies, the development of a methodology for the computerization of pharmaceutical information exchange processes is relevant.
 The purpose of our study was to develop a methodology for creating a unified accounting system (UAS) of information on pharmaceutical and medical products (Ph&MP) in Ukraine (taking into account the current standards of computer systems for structuring and fixing information, as well as in accordance with international standards for automated identification of information about Ph&MP.
 The objects of the research were: scientific and specialized publications devoted to the issue of the implementation of a system of accounting and tracking of medical and health care in the EU, USA, Canada;pharmaceutical information with tracking and recording the established information flows in computer databases.The main research is based on the methodology of pharmaceutical informatics: creation of pharmaceutical computer databases, coding of pharmaceutical products. The method of system analysis processed publications on the types of Ph&MP encodings in the EU, USA, Canada.
 In the scientific work, the international standards for the sale of information in two-dimensional shaded codes of the DataMatrixECC 200 standard are highlighted, which is one of the information blocks on the basis of which the development of the UAS Ph&MP database structure should be based.The structure and interconnection of information blocks for the accounting of Ph&MP units using GTIN and serial numbers in the database of structural units of business entities of the pharmaceutical market of Ukraine have been developed.
 A systematic analysis of the types of Ph&MP encodings in the EU countries, the USA, and Canada has been carried out.Highlighted rational approaches to the formation of coding and accounting for Ph & MP, taking into account national characteristics. The basis of the integral structure of the UAS Ph&MP with basic information blocks has been developed.Approaches and principles to the methodology of its formation are given, taking into account the current standards of computer systems for the structuring and fixing of information, as well as in accordance with international standards for automated identification of information about Ph&MP. The requirements for the compliance of computer databases of structural units of business entities with modern standards for preserving pharmaceutical information necessary about medicines when accounting are presented.

An Analysis of Medical Informatics and Application of Computer-Aided Decision Support Framework

Due to the advent of technology in the medical sector, the future of the Computer-Aided Decision (CAD) is promising as a support system for the processing of images. Since there is significant results reported due to the application of diagnostic radiology in the healthcare facility, radiologists are looking forward to enhancing medical and bioinformatics using CAD. Medical evaluations and trials have been done over the past few decades to aid in the optimization of accurate programs and evaluate the real contributions of CAD in the medical informatics interpretation procedures. Health experts and radiologists utilizing patient outputs from fundamental application of CAD are placed in the best position to focus on the final decisions concerning the performance of patients and diagnosis. However, researches have shown that the computer outputs require not projecting significant general accuracy compared to a certain radiologist to enhance patients’ performance. The volume and measure of the present patient data including their complexity to enhance the process of making proper healthcare decisions while making it problematic for healthcare practitioners and physicians to facilitate the management of patients. This condition calls for the usage of biomedical informatics methodologies to effectively process information, create biomedical implementations and informatics frameworks for CAD support systems. With that regard, this paper evaluates the medical and bioinformatics based on the application of CAD systems. It further projects on the applications of the systems, their application guidelines and techniques. The paper ends with the analysis of the future problems and directions of the CAD support framework.

Exploring the Regulation Mechanism of Xihuang Pill, Olibanum and β-Boswellic Acid on the Biomolecular Network of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Based on Transcriptomics and Chemical Informatics Methodology

BackgroundXihuang Pill (XHP) is mainly used to treat “Ru Yan (breast cancer)”. Evidence-based medical evidence and showed that XHP improves the efficacy of chemotherapy and reduced chemotherapy-induced toxicity in breast cancer patients. However, the mechanism of XHP against breast cancer is not clear.MethodsThe effect of XHP extract on cell half-inhibitory concentration (IC50) and cell viability of MD-MB-231 cells was detected by CCK-8 method. The cell inhibition rate of MDA-MB-453 cells were detected by MTT method. Apoptosis was detected by flow cytometry, cell transfer ability was detected by Transwell method, and cell proliferation ability was detected by colony formation assay. The expression of Notch1, β-catenin and c-myc mRNA in MDA-MB-453 cells were detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR. Then, chemical informatics and transcriptomics methodology was utilized to predict the potential compounds and targets of XHP, and collect triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) genes and the data of Olibanum and β-boswellic acid intervention MD-MB-231 cells (from GSE102891). The cytoscape software was utilized to undergo network construction and network analysis. Finally, the data from the network analysis was imported into the DAVID database for enrichment analysis of signaling pathways and biological processes.ResultsThe IC50 was 15.08 g/L (for MD-MB-231 cells). After interfering with MD-MB-231 cells with 15.08 g/L XHP extract for 72 h, compared with the control group, the cell viability, migration and proliferation was significantly decreased, while early apoptosis and late apoptosis were significantly increased (P < 0.01). After interfering with MDA-MB-453 cells with 6 g/L XHP extract for 72 h, compared with the control group, the cell inhibition and apoptosis rate increased, while the expression of Notch1, β-catenin and c-myc mRNA decreased. (P < 0.05). The chemical informatics and transcriptomics analysis showed that four networks were constructed and analyzed: (1) potential compounds-potential targets network of XHP; (2) XHP-TNBC PPI network; (3) DEGs PPI network of Olibanum-treated MD-MB 231 cells; (4) DEGs PPI network of β-boswellic acid -treated MD-MB 231 cells. Several anti-TNBC biological processes, signaling pathways, targets and so on were obtained.ConclusionXHP may exert anti-TNBC effects through regulating biological processes, signaling pathways, targets found in this study.

The extensible Data-Brain model: Architecture, applications and directions

One of the key ideas in realizing human-like intelligence is to understand information-processing mechanisms in the human brain. Brain Informatics is a rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field to systematically utilize brain-related data, information and knowledge coming from the entire research process for in-depth brain investigation. In the past few years, a data-centric conceptual brain model, namely Data-Brain, has been proposed, providing the foundation for the systematic Brain Informatics methodology. The Data-Brain model constitutes a conceptual framework and detailed guideline for managing and analyzing brain big data. The development of Data-Brain model also demands the support from advanced technologies. This paper presents an extensible version of the Data-Brain with advanced computing techniques in the connected world. It provides a global understanding of how multidisciplinary techniques work together to tackle brain computing challenges. Particularly, the integrated K-I-D (Knowledge-Information-Data) loop is proposed, constructing a cycle as the thinking space to help pursue the systematic brain investigation, by which the extensible Data-Brain model continuously iterates and evolves through the never-ending learning. Such synergistic evolvement will power future progress for building intelligence systems and applications connected with the study of complex human brain.

Diagnostic Informatics: Its Role in Enhancing Clinical Excellence, Patient Safety and the Value of Care.

Diagnostic informatics encompasses the role of information technology in key areas of the diagnostic testing (pathology and medical imaging) process, including the selection of appropriate tests and interpretation and follow-up of test results. We present three case studies employing diagnostic informatics methodologies to demonstrate their potential use and value in health services research: (1) Data analytics applied to diagnostic data linked with patient outcome data as a means of enhanancing the monitoring of the quality and appropriateness of diagnostic test choices; (2) Business process modelling which can help to highlight healthcare processes in the diagnostic pathway as a means of improving safety and performance, and (3) Consumer involvement in the diagnostic research process to assist in the establishment of person-centred test result management systems. The case studies provide evidence of the role that diagnostic informatics can have in improving the quality and safety of patient care.