The 4 Core Research Areas of Medical Informatics

By University of Texas School of Biomedical Informatics, Educating leaders in health informatics since 1997. Originally published on Quora.

With the growth in technology and increased patient data, medical informatics has become a vast field of study. As medical informatics progressed, researchers have identified core areas that will improve and have an impact on the current state of healthcare delivery. A few of these core research areas are listed below:

Natural Language Processing

Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology is designed to derive meaningful and actionable data from freely written text. NLP technology continues to be refined and provides countless benefits. Through effective NLP, health care professionals are doing more than saving time. They are communicating more effectively, identifying crucial data, and pushing the boundaries of health care forward.

Precession Medicine

The healthcare IT field, and world in general, is full of hot trends and buzzwords. One important and popular trend that is continuously gaining more traction is the practice of “precision medicine.” Advances in health care research and the industry as a whole have led to more providers and hospitals utilizing precision medicine treatments.

Wearable technologies

In 2016, we were no longer limited to a few options in terms of smart watches. Most first generation designs have since been replaced by second and third generation versions with many improvements. As the market for wearable devices grows, we will more than likely find more wearable smart devices clinging to our bodies.

Augmented Reality

Virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR, respectively) has been an area of intrigue for some time now. Initially it was little more than a novelty but, the technology is improving by leaps and bounds. Naturally, its practical applications have also including everything from improved physician training, to pain management.

As this technology is further refined and more widely adopted, there is massive potential for truly revolutionized care.

Apart from these areas, research work is being carried out in health mobile applications, artificial intelligence, health care big data analytics and large EHR technologies.

By University of Texas School of Biomedical Informatics, Educating leaders in health informatics since 1997. Originally published on Quora.

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