We hope to provide articles, columns, and calendar items that you can use to expand your own knowledge of information resources and give you an inside look at the latest in information technology and applications in the Health Sciences Center and beyond. I see three major transformations in health care over the next 25 years, and they are already underway.
Information technology is key to all three transformations.
Contemporary medicine has so much technology, and such an enormous and rapidly changing knowledge base, that first-rate management of information has everything to do with quality of care. If we don't have the right information where we need it, when we need it, and in a way that we can use it, we risk failing to perform up to standard. Informatics has become essential to our work. I've been interested in medical knowledge bases, libraries, and the medical record since my training years. In 1971, when I was a surgery resident, I actually changed Duke University Hospital's medical record.