Pediatric Informatics: Computer Applications in Child Health (Health ...

464 G.R. Kim and S.T. Weinberg
It requires multidisciplinary collaboration. Pediatricians must establish and
maintain alliances with other members of the health care team (families, specialists,
nurses and pharmacists and institutional leadership) as an essential part of
“systems-based practice.” 55 Health care providers and developers must keep in
mind that effective health information management is only part of any solution
to optimize pediatric care and safety.
The development of a pediatric community of practice (CoP) 56 that includes
families, physicians, nurses and other advocates can strengthen collaborations to
improve child health as well as help build the infrastructure needed to improve
the control of health care information. Ubiquitous tools such as e-mail, the Web,
mobile computing and cellular telephones now connect practitioners to online
communities of peers and experts through professional organizations (such as
the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Informatics
Association) for collective problem-solving in ways which would previously have
been time-consuming if not impossible. In fact, it has been the shared work of such
a community that created this text and forms the basis for future work in pediatric
informatics.
The aim of this text is to introduce pediatric informatics (a developing area of
applied clinical informatics) and its concepts, to pediatricians, other health professionals
and IT developers by providing pointers to relevant literature, to online
resources and to members within its growing community of practice. Unlike texts,
the living community is not static, but evolves continually as the science, practice
and business of pediatrics evolve. Therefore, a second aim of the book is to invite
readers to explore and to participate in the community of pediatric informatics (The
Appendix contains a partial list of associated organizations and resources) in your
own efforts in leveraging information technology to improve child health.
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