According to Nelson and Staggers (2016), computers have become an integral part of health informatics. Computers have combined various disciplines of health care including my focus that is consumer health informatics. The Consumer Health Informatics Working Group of the International Medical Informatics Association has defined consumer health informatics as the use of modern computers and telecommunication to help in the analysis and research of unique health needs. Through this, obtained information has contributed largely to the development of health informatics (Hoyt & Yoshihashi, 2014). In general, consumer health informatics have bridged the gap between health resources and patients, this is the main reason why the discipline appealed to me. This paper will create an insight on consumer health informatics and how it has contributed to the development of health informatics.
Through the years, medical informatics has transformed greatly. In this discipline of consumer health informatics, the development has occurred through the improvement of information systems. These systems have been designed for both physicians and the consumers who are the patients. This informatics has been focused on designing systems and models that integrate consumer preferences into medical informational systems (Fang et al., 2016). As mentioned above, the opportunities presented are better systems and models that integrate consumer preferences and needs. This discipline offers professional opportunities in fields of public health, nursing, health promotion, library science, health education, and communication science. This discipline rates foremost compared to clinical informatics and clinical research informatics, the reason for this is that these two disciplines are designed and limited to consumer preferences of which is the main subject of consumer health informatics (Nazi et al., 2016).
Conclusion
Various models and systems have been designed out of consumer health informatics and an example of these is the Keiser model. This model enables patients to communicate constantly and directly with their physicians (Eysenbach et al., 2016). As the world continues to develop, health informatics will follow suit and this discipline will play a major role.
References
Eysenbach, G., Jimison, H., Kukafka, R., Lewis, D., & Stavri, P. (2016). Consumer health informatics.(2000). British Medical Journal, 320, 7251.
Fang, R., Pouyanfar, S., Yang, Y., Chen, S. C., & Iyengar, S. S. (2016). Computational health informatics in the big data age: a survey. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 49(1), 12.
Hoyt, R. E., & Yoshihashi, A. K. (2014). Health informatics: a practical guide for healthcare and information technology professionals. Lulu. com.
Nazi, K. M., Hogan, T. P., Woods, S. S., Simon, S. R., & Ralston, J. D. (2016). Consumer health informatics: engaging and empowering patients and families. In Clinical Informatics Study Guide (pp. 459-500). Springer International Publishing.
Nelson, R., & Staggers, N. (2016). Health Informatics-E-Book: An Interprofessional Approach. Elsevier Health Sciences.
