Necessity and potential of educating medical students, physicians and other health care professionals in medical informatics

Although information technology continues to grow more and more important for health care, it still has enormous untapped potential. Accordingly, all kinds of health care professionals should have skills in the field of health and medical informatics. Within the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), Working Group 1 'Health and Medical Informatics Education' (http://www.imia.org/wg1) seeks to advance the knowledge of these skills and how they are taught in the various health care professions (medicine, nursing, medical informatics, administration, etc.) around the world. At its 6th International Conference on Health and Medical Informatics Education (August 1997, Newcastle, Australia), the working group addressed the transformation of health-care through innovative use of information technology. This paper describes the results of the conference, which have been published in a special issue of the International Journal of Medical Informatics. In addition to reviewing traditional issues concerning Health and Medical Informatics Education, it focuses on up to date methodologies like telematics, distance education and computer-based training.