Medicine in the 21st Century: Global Problems, Global Solutions^[1]

Summary

Objectives: To discuss application areas of information technology in medicine and health care on the occasion of the opening of the Private Universität für Medizinische Informatik und Technik Tirol/University for Health Informatics and Technology Tyrol (UMIT) at Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria.

Results and Conclusions: Important application areas of information technology in medicine and health are appropriate individual access to medical knowledge, new engineering developments such as new radiant imaging methods and the implantable pacemaker/ defibrillator devices, mathematical modeling for understanding the workings of the human body, the computer-based patient record, as well as new knowledge in molecular biology, human genetics, and biotechnology. Challenges and responsibilities for medical informatics research include medical data privacy and intellectual property rights inherent in the content of the information systems.

Keywords

Medical informatics - health informatics

¹ Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the Private Universität für Medizinische Informatik und Technik Tirol/University for Health Informatics and Technology Tyrol (UMIT) at Inns-bruck, Tyrol, Austria on April 5th, 2002. UMIT received accreditation as a university through the Austrian federal government in 2001. In October 2001 UMIT started with two educational programs – Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Medical Informatics. In Parallel, Ph.D. students are working on research projects. Details on UMIT and a documentation of the opening ceremony can be found under www.UMIT.at.