Eine Einführung in die Medizininformatik: Geschichtliche Entwicklung, Träume, Ideen, Erfolge und Grenzen

Historical Development, Dreams, Ideas, Successes and Limitations

Abstract

Medical informatics has significantly contributed to the enormous advances in medicine in recent decades. It provides the methods for the digitalization of medicine and is confronted with its bright and dark sides. It paves the way to the transformation of the health care system into a medical apparatus where cost considerations possibly take precedence over the well-being of patients. It helps to build large databases in which dis- ease cases are registered and vast amounts of sensitive data are collected that are formally, but not really effectively, anonymized. However it has also always been overburdened with unrealistic expectations, and faces high obstacles that can only be partially overcome. Med- ical informatics has always been successful with simple, tangible solutions whose integration into existing processes was unobtrusively possible in the background and whose use provided an immediate obvious advantage for users. Sophisticated, but difficult-to-understand or difficult-to-use constructions were not successful. In contrast to the areas in which medical informatics showed solid results and practical successes, artificial intelligence (AI), which receives a lot of public attention, was of rather minor importance in the practice of medical informatics up to now. Having said that, medical informatics also shows ways to control the technological impact associated with the digitalization of medicine and to keep medicine humane, and it helps to empower patients by providing information, by making processes transparent, and by giving them means for participation and control.