Editing Health informatics (section)

==International history==
Worldwide use of computer technology in medicine began in the early 1950s with the rise of the computers. In 1949, [[Gustav Wagner]] established the first professional organization for informatics in Germany. Specialized university departments and Informatics training programs began during the 1960s in France, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands. Medical informatics research units began to appear during the 1970s in Poland and in the U.S.<ref name="nyu">{{cite web|title=NYU Graduate Training Program in Biomedical Informatics (BMI): A Brief History of Biomedical Informatics as a Discipline|url=http://www.nyuinformatics.org/education/degree-programs|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101212071558/http://www.nyuinformatics.org/education/degree-programs|archive-date=2010-12-12|access-date=11 November 2010|work=nyuinformatics.org|url-status=usurped|publisher=NYU Langone Medical Center}}</ref> Since then the development of high-quality health informatics research, education and infrastructure has been a goal of the U.S. and the European Union.

Early names for health informatics included medical computing, biomedical computing, medical computer science, computer medicine, medical electronic data processing, medical automatic data processing, medical information processing, medical information science, [[medical software]] engineering, and medical computer technology.

The health informatics community is still growing, it is by no means a mature profession, but work in the UK by the voluntary registration body, the UK Council of Health Informatics Professions has suggested eight key constituencies within the domain–information management, knowledge management, portfolio/program/project management, ICT, education and research, clinical informatics, health records(service and business-related), health informatics service management. These constituencies accommodate professionals in and for the NHS, in academia and commercial service and solution providers.

Since the 1970s the most prominent international coordinating body has been the [[International Medical Informatics Association]] (IMIA).