‘Medical information science’: Insisting on a name can blunt its impact

Abstract

The idea that medical information science may constitute a discipline or a special entity in the configuration of academic endeavours in medicine is provocative, but it is superfluous. However, human beings being what they are with respect to their ambitions and their career needs, it is very probable that something called ‘medical information science’ will come to be, and certain practitioners will form organizations, titles, journals, and distinctions in that context. As one who has been involved with computers since very early days, I would like to submit an opinion: ‘medical information science’ would not exist in its present connotation were it not for the existence of computers. Like any other technology which is tool-driven, the essential concepts and the discovery of new understanding coalesce about the subject matter because of the physical tool. Prefix the notion of information processing with ‘medical’ and it seems to be unique. But the human processing of information formed the very essence of the practice of medicine long before the emergence of computers. Physicians were the principal practitioners of medical information processing using the only available tool of their time, the human brain. So, if there is a discipline it differs only by machine.