January 30, 2007

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A one-day conference designed to address the critical shortage of health-care professionals with training in the evolving discipline known as health informatics will be held on Saturday, Feb. 17, at the UC Davis Health System Education Building and F. William Blaisdell, M.D. Medical Library.

“Health Informatics & eHealth in California: The Future is Now!” will provide a forum to explore critical topics in informatics and eHealth through presentations and hands-on laboratory experiences. The conference is aimed at health professionals with an interest in eHealth and informatics, information technology professionals with experience in the health-care industry, and health informaticists. The conference starts at 7 a.m. with registration and a continental breakfast, and concludes at 4 p.m.

The keynote speaker at the conference, Don Detmer, president of the American Informatics Association, will speak at 8:40 a.m. Detmer will provide an overview of the state of informatics and eHealth around the world. Other speakers include Thomas Nesbitt, director of the UC Davis Center for Health and Technology, who will describe telemedicine and distance learning in the University of California system; and Kenneth I. Joy, UC Davis computer science professor and co-director for the Institute for Data Analysis and Visualization, giving a lecture titled "Visual Techniques for Exploration of Information Streams."

Health informatics is defined as the rapidly developing scientific field that deals with the storage, retrieval and optimal use of biomedical information, data and knowledge for problem solving and decision making. Among the information sources and processes involved in medical informatics are computerized patient charts, algorithms designed to identify a quick, definitive sequence for pursuing a diagnosis, medical resources such as textbooks and journals, and medical education curricula.

For more information on the conference, go to the Web at http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/cme/conferences/.