President's column: operational informatics - expanding the scope of our discipline

In 2012, the AMIA Board of Directors issued a white paper which defined biomedical informatics 1 and noted that '…iden-tifying new competency areas on an ongoing basis is especially important for a field that is rapidly changing in both its inform-atics and its biomedical and health aspects.' With the advent of the new medical board certification in Clinical Informatics and our efforts to develop the Advanced Interprofessional Informatics Certification (AIIC) process for non-physicians, further refinement of our focus as a discipline seems warranted. The more global, all-inclusive definition is that biomedical informatics is '…the interdisciplinary field that studies and pursues the effective uses of biomedical data, information, and knowledge for scientific inquiry, problem solving, and decision making, driven by efforts to improve human health.' 1 There are a number of more refined areas of focus under the umbrella of biomedical informatics: (1) health informatics, which includes clinical, medical, nursing, dental, and public health or population informatics; (2) translational bioinformat-ics and clinical research informatics; and (3) structural (imaging) informatics. Charles Friedman, PhD in a recent article in the journal stated that informatics represents a field that is 'cross-trained with knowledge in the basic sciences and within a particular practice domain.' 2 He noted that the knowledge held by professionals in the field is derived from—but not limited to —'information science, computer science, cognitive science and organization science' (emphasis added). I emphasize the 'organization science' aspect because I believe that as an area of focus within the informatics sciences, it has—from my perspec-tive—been inadequately addressed by the field in recent years. For most informaticians, the field of biomedical informatics ranges from basic research to applied research and practice. While the various definitions capture many elements of the informatics field, it seems to me that we are missing a very important component where informatics can make a huge contribution to healthcare through what I refer to as 'operational informatics.' At the risk of increasing the 'adjective problem' defined by William Hersh, MD as the addition of 'words that precede the term informatics,' I offer this concept not to split hairs but rather to expand the field and its potential contribution to improving health and healthcare. I believe it is important for those of us who are engaged in this dynamic and evolving field to be clear how we can more fully contribute to the ongoing debate on the future of health-care. As I …