Cognitive Informatics in Biomedicine and Healthcare

Enormous advances in information technology have permeated essentially all facets of life. Although these technologies are transforming the workplace as well as leisure time, formidable challenges remain in fostering tools that enhance productivity, are sensitive to work practices, and are intuitive to learn and to use effectively. Informatics is a discipline concerned with applied and basic science of information, the practices involved in information processing, and the engineering of information systems.

Cognitive Informatics (CI), a term that has been adopted and applied particularly in the fields of biomedicine and health care, is the multidisciplinary study of cogni­tion, information and computational sciences. It investigates all facets of computer applications in biomedicine and health care, including system design and computer-mediated intelligent action. The basic scientific discipline of CI is strongly grounded in methods and theories derived from cognitive science. The discipline provides a framework for the analysis and modeling of complex human performance in tech­nology-mediated settings and contributes to the design and development of better information systems for biomedicine and health care.

Despite the significant growth of this discipline, there have been few systematic published volumes for reference or instruction intended for working professionals, scientists or graduate students in cognitive science and biomedical informatics, beyond those published in this series. Although information technologies are now in widespread use globally for promoting increased self-reliance in patients, there is often a disparity between the scientific and technological knowledge underlying healthcare practices and the lay beliefs, mental models, and cognitive representa­tions of illness and disease. The topics covered in this book series address the key research gaps in biomedical informatics related to the applicability of theories, models, and evaluation frameworks of HCI and human factors as they apply to clini­cians as well as to the lay public.