Introduction
World of Data, Systems Interactions, and The Interactivity of Professionals
We are in a time of explosive technology throughout the world. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making decisions with or without input from expert healthcare providers and ChatGPT is rapidly impacting other aspects of healthcare, as well. Tremendous shortages exist in access to healthcare based on many factors, including worker shortages. Technology is one aspect of informatics in our digital age for interprofessional practitioners to employ as a mechanism to address access to care. We hear more and more the depth of the thread of technology, science, communication, and knowledge in many realms identified as ‘informatics’.
‘Informatics’ is coined as an umbrella concept connecting much of what our digital native students experience yet, do not necessarily understand the meaning and impact of in everything they do. A basic definition of informatics is using information systems, processing information, using computer science to interface, and then gaining new knowledge to apply. Yet, it is so much more when we recognize how it interfaces with so many disciplines and even in our daily lives. Informatics for health care is defined as “the integration of health-care sciences, computer science, information science, and cognitive science to assist in the management of healthcare information” (Saba & McCormick, 2015, p. 232). We can see from this definition, informatics is much more than just information systems, processing, and computer science. It is important to recognize that now informatics covers a plethora of concepts, and to meet the needs of interdisciplinary engagement and collaboration, an understanding of the basics of computer operations and computer science is necessary. All that we see, such as searching the internet, working with databases, and many other social apps are based in the latter definition of informatics. Much of this is crucial in how we learn systems thinking leading to gain critical thinking skills. Richmond (2018) describes what is necessary to develop critical thinking. We must see the larger problem (can be a concept) and break it down into steps to be able to understand what we need to do to address that concept or problem. Once we can do this, we can then not only act, but anticipate future issues that might arise.
This book contains three chapters to bring forward how integral systems thinking in our digital age is as we think of the world of data, system interactions, and interactivity of professionals.
As interprofessionals we work collaboratively and use informatics as our foundation, the interconnectivity for delivery of care.
The following is an overview of the content of this book:
Chapter 1 covers the importance of epidemiology
Chapter 2 covers data analysis and visualization
Chapter 3 covers hardware and software of information systems and generative AI
References
AI. (2023, July, 29). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2018). Introduction to Epidemiology. Introduction to Epidemiology|Public Health 101 Series|CDC
ChatGPT. (2023 July, 27). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT
Health informatics. (2023). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_informatics
Informatics: Research and practice. (2023).AMIA. https://amia.org/about-amia/why-informatics/informatics-research-and-practice
Richmond, B. (2018). The “thinking” in systems thinking: How can we make it easier to master? SYSTEMSTHINKER. The Systems Thinker – The “Thinking” in Systems Thinking: How Can We Make It Easier to Master? – The Systems Thinker
Saba, V. K., & McCormick, K.A. (2015). Essentials of Nursing Informatics (6th ed). McGraw Hill.
Systems thinking. (2023, July, 26). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines or software, as opposed to the intelligence of human beings or animals.
ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) is a large language model-based chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched on November 30, 2022, notable for enabling users to refine and steer a conversation towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language used.
At its core, informatics is the science of information and all its aspects – how it’s stored, processed, communicated, and used. It is mainly thought of today as computerized information, but can also apply to information stored, communicated and used on paper, audio tape, or even in someone’s brain.
Though a current informatics definition is now usually linked with a scientific discipline such as medical informatics or healthcare informatics, the term also can apply to more diverse areas such as library informatics, financial, or even sports.
With the increase of electronic health records, the healthcare field has become one of the dominant users of informatics. As today’s seemingly infinite amount of data continues growing, informatics is used to help process, analyze, and communicate large chunks of data while seeking clues to support and sustain public health and enhance the quality of care in the field of biomedical informatics.
Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts.
The branch of medicine which deals with the incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases and other factors relating to health.
