Evaluation of Biomedical Infor matics Innovations and Their Impact on Public Health

Summary

This issue of Methods of Information in Medicine contains four feature articles that are focused on the theme of evaluation. Evaluation approaches are increasingly essential in the assessment of determining the potential impact of contemporary informatics innovations. The featured articles offer practical perspectives to determining the impact of advancements. Internationally, there are significant advances being made across biomedical informatics and its related sub-disciplines. As with any scientific discipline, it is important for practitioners to be able to relate the potential importance of findings. To this end, it is especially important for biomedical informaticians to convey, in a quantifiable and comparable form, the significance of the informatics findings – not only to peers but also to those across the biomedical research spectrum. As such, the feature articles in this issue describe the evaluation of core infrastructure and fundamental informatics innovations as well as evaluation of informatics-based resources that are a core aspect of public health initiatives.

Keywords

Biomedical informatics - health informatics - public health informatics - evaluation

• References

• 1 Borycki EM, Kushniruk AW, Bellwood P, Brender J. Technology-induced Errors - The Current Use of Frameworks and Models from the Biomedical and Life Sciences Literatures. Methods Inf Med 2012; 51 (02) 95-103.
• 2 De Keizer NF, Talmon J, Ammenwerth E, Brender J, Rigby M, Nykanen P. Systematic Prioritization of the STARE-HI Reporting Items - An Application to Short Conference Papers on Health Informatics Evaluation. Methods Inf Med 2012; 51 (02) 104-111.
• 3 Emmert M, Sander U, Esslinger AS, Maryschok M, Schöffski O. Public Reporting in Germany: the Content of Physician Rating Websites. Methods Inf Med 2012; 51 (02) 112-129.
• 4 Sockolow P, Crawford P, Lehmann H. Health Services Research Evaluation Principles - Broadening a General Framework for Evaluating Health Information Technology. Methods Inf Med. 2012; 51 (02) 130-138.