scope:

Preface

Healthcare informatics, increasing productivity and efficiency, addresses the critical issue regarding the ongoing debate over rising costs in the healthcare industry, namely: Can the incorporation of information technologies drive efficiencies to help reduce costs and enhance the quality of care for patients? The answer is a resounding yes. Technologies that facilitate the input, storage, access, analysis, and communication of data and information for practitioners, administrators, researchers, and regulators can help identify inefficiencies in procedures across the spectrum of healthcare services. The application of knowledge generated from the availability of information should ultimately result in enhanced resource allocations, reduce costs, and promote the pipeline for new innovations.

This book is comprised of two major sections that address these concepts. The first part of the work provides an introduction and background to the state of affairs in our current healthcare system and describes the theoretical underpinnings, such as information and knowledge management, project management, and strategic initiatives essential to achieving successful informatics-based implementations within healthcare organizations. Some example project implementations are included in the early chapters as well. The latter half of the book focuses on actual applications that have been incorporated by various healthcare organizations along with corresponding strategic management issues that were involved for successful project rollouts. These applications include e-commerce, the creation of digital data, business intelligence, and high-end analytics initiatives.