Medical informatics education

Medical Informatics is a multidisciplinary field, dealing mainly with informatics and technology applications in health care. Medical Informatics is composed from a number of sub-areas such as computer based patient record (CPR), processing of multimedia information (signals, images), coding and transmission through high speed networks of medical information (telematics), medical decision support systems, data security and integrity, integration of technologies in hospital and regional environments, and development of educational tools. The people who receive such an education are capable of development, integration and maintenance of complex hospital and health information systems both at departmental and regional levels. A very important issue however is the acceptance of information technology (IT) solutions engineered by medical informaticians from the medical personnel. In this paper we shall deal with the set-up of a medical informatics and medical technology educational environment, as well as the areas from medical informatics that the average user needs to be familiar with in order for the successful deployment of IT solutions in health care.