Informatics Information Science library science The sciences concerned

Informatics Information Science (library science) The sciences concerned with gathering and manipulating and storing and retrieving and classifying recorded information

Informatics The application of computers and statistics to the management of information. For example, in the Human Genome Project, informatics has permitted the development and use of methods to search databases quickly, analyze DNA sequence information, and predict protein sequence and structure from DNA sequence data.

Informatics, the Bottom Line n n n Purpose (output): to predict protein sequence and structure Requirements: analyze for patterns Knowledge needed: statistics Tools needed: computer & software Input: DNA sequence data What data to collect? Why these attributes? Domain Knowledge needed.

What is IS? n n n Management: allocation of resources Information: data analysis Systems: (1) Information Technology, (2) Organization Restructuring due to IT implementation IS may help create efficiency, but it is not efficient by itself without planning

Where can IS help? Value Chain n Input Logistic n Processing n Output Logistic n Marketing and Sales n Services

“Value” in Informatics Important: Accuracy and Validity n Accuracy: reduce the cost of measurement and verification (including not having to verify) n Validity: reduce the cost of testing so the sample size my increase, or the test may be refined

The Need of Operational Definition n Without quantifiable attributes, IS can only, at best, serve as a storage service The determination of attributes and their values are assessed require domain knowledge Reengineering: converting qualitative attributes to quantitative ones

Quality in Healthcare What is “quality”? n What is the goal of healthcare? n A list of measurement: immunization ratio, life expectancy, days off work, etc. Really? n

Quality in Healthcare Education Domain Knowledge: what to do and how to do n Communication: sender -> medium -> receiver; coding -> transmit -> decoding Wait…how do you define quality here? n

Quality in Health Education n n 全民皆兵 全民皆醫? Which part of “what to do” and “how to do” will generate the highest benefit and avoid disasters? After we figure this part out, then what devices can we use to implement the system?

Quality in Health Education n n Which part of such education should be memorized? Kept as Reference? Just-in-time Learning in Education JIT Learning in Health Education? The effect of mobile device (including 3 G phones and wireless PDAs) to “referencing”

Quality in Informatics n n n E(x) = Σ x*P(x) To be able to “predict” we need to know what attributes to observe and have a way of measuring their changes We need to know the probability (i. e. , the distribution) of each potential values for the attributes

Researches in Informatics n n n Are data really normally distributed? Bradford’s Law, Lotka’s Law, Zipf’s Law, the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 Rule) Skew Distribution? Junk DNA shows Zipf’s Distribution What does it mean?

Researches in Informatics n n n Can we classify items according to their distribution? Libraries with the same usage pattern could be managed by the same methodology regardless of contents? Illnesses with the same occurring pattern may be handled by the same protocol regardless of their nature?

Questions and [no] Answer? n n n What is Informatics? What is the purpose of Informatics? How do we know these “purposes” are correct? Are there better ones? What is healthcare (assuming that is what bio-informatics are for)? What is the purpose of healthcare? …