Improving Bridging from Informatics Theory to Practice.

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Biomedical Data Management
• Clinical Information Systems

Background:

• Methods of Information in Medicine (MIM) has published on data management in biomedicine since 1962.
• Applied Clinical Informatics (ACI) was launched in 2009 to address practical health information system implementation.
• Both journals are official publications of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA).

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe major topics in MIM during 2014.
• To explore the influence of MIM's theoretical work on ACI's practical applications.
• To identify lessons learned and propose editorial policies to enhance theory-to-practice bridging.

Main Methods:

• A retrospective observational study reviewed 61 MIM articles from 2014.
• Reference lists of 70 ACI articles from 2014 were analyzed.
• Consensus among authors, influenced by editorial board discussions, informed lessons learned and policy recommendations.

Main Results:

• MIM topics in 2014 included biosignal interpretation, citation analysis, and health technologies.
• Nine ACI articles cited 18 MIM papers, primarily focusing on clinical documentation and medication decision support.
• Direct links between MIM theory and ACI practice were identified but were infrequent.

Conclusions:

• Editorial policies could improve the translation of theory to practice.
• Publishing systematic methodological reviews in MIM may strengthen the link.
• Clarifying the practical impact of theory-focused articles could enhance bridging.