Dental Informatics: An Emerging Biomedical Informatics Discipline

Figure 3. Relationship of basic research in biomedical informatics to the spectrum of applications in biomedicineBasic ResearchMedical Informatics Methods,Techniques, and TheoriesApplied ResearchBioinformaticsImagingInformaticsClinicalInformaticsPublic HealthInformaticsMolecular andCellularProcessesTissues andOrgansIndividuals(Patients)PopulationsAnd SocietySource: Shortliffe E, Johnson S. Medical informatics training and research at Columbia University. Yearbook of Medical Informatics2002;173-80. Reprinted with permission from Schattauer Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany.claim informatics as part of their domain. On theother hand, an excessive number of boundaries hasthe danger of balkanizing biomedical informatics asa whole.It is obvious that the spectrum of research questionsranging from the cellular and molecular levelto public health is similar in most clinical disciplines.It is also intuitive that most informatics methods aremore or less broadly applicable across this range ofresearch questions. The differences seem to clusterin the applied domain, where discipline-specific solutionsare most needed. To give a practical example,much energy, thought, and effort have been expendedon the development of computer-based patientrecords. 40 Many innovations in computerizing medicalrecords, however, have had little or no utility fordentistry. For instance, representational schemes andstandards for clinical data, such as the SNOMED,the Reed Codes, the ICD, and HL-7, typically don’trepresent dental concepts and data very well. Sincethe representations are not the same, computer systemsfor inputting, storing, managing, and analyzinginformation must necessarily differ. Differencesat the systems level, such as the practice setting(which in dentistry is heavily weighted towards thesolo practitioner model), the distribution of generalistsand specialists, and reimbursement schemes, alsotend to limit the transferability of theories, methods,and applications from one setting to another.However, despite the fact that many practicalproblems require discipline-specific solutions, broadand interdisciplinary collaboration within the biomedicalinformatics community seems to be one ofthe best ways to develop these solutions. As inclusiveand broad communities of researchers, such asthe American Medical Informatics Association, continueto illustrate, enormous opportunities for crossfertilizationand collaboration across health disciplinesexist. This spirit is also embodied in thephilosophies of most biomedical informatics trainingprograms 22,41,42 that train physicians, dentists,nurses, pharmacologists, computer scientists, and individualsfrom many other disciplines with curriculathat share a common core, but are adapted to theneeds of specific disciplines.1198 Journal of Dental Education ■ Volume 67, Number 11