Medical Informatics : Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine

This series is directed to healthcare professionals who are leading the transfor- mation of health care by using information and knowledge. Launched in 1988 as Computers in Health Care, the series offers a broad range of titles: some ad- dressed to specific professions such as nursing, medicine, and health adminis- tration; others to special areas of practice such as trauma and radiology. Still other books in the series focus on interdisciplinary issues, such as the computer- based patient record, electronic health records, and networked healthcare systems. Renamed Health Informatics in 1998 to reflect the rapid evolution in the dis- cipline now known as health informatics, the series continues to add titles that contribute to the evolution of the field. In the series, eminent experts, serving as editors or authors, offer their accounts of innovations in health informatics. In- creasingly, these accounts go beyond hardware and software to address the role of information in influencing the transformation of healthcare delivery systems around the world. The series also increasingly focuses on "e;peopleware"e; and the organizational, behavioral, and societal changes that accompany the diffusion of information technology in health services environments.