The department of Medical Informatics is a scientific department within the AMC which was founded in 1995. The department explores opportunities of informatics theory and information technology for a better understanding and improvement of health care. Through education it also prepares professionals in health informatics and promotes their intellectual growth.
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For additional information, staff home pages and publications please go here
The central research theme within the department is supporting, steering and evaluating patient care using methods and techniques native to the information sciences and other related disciplines. The starting point of the research is medicine and health care rather than technology. The department maintains close collaborations with clinical partners within and outside the AMC and collaborates on research projects with national and international partners. The department was responsible for organizing various international workshops, symposia and tutorials in themes related to Medical Informatics.
Research is performed in projects in which PhD students are involved. Currently there are 12 PhD students working on projects in collaboration with local, national or international partners. Most projects are at least partially funded by other parties. Examples of funding sources are NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research), the Ministry of Economic Affairs, health care insurance organizations, the pharmaceutical industry, various clinical foundations as the Heart Foundation, National Intensive care Foundation, Prenatal Registry Foundation, the European Renal Association, and various clinical departments.
As far as education is concerned, the department and the AMC have been active in the international arena. The AMC initiative 'International Partnership in Health Informatics Education' (IPHIE) is responsible for the organization of international bachelor courses, master classes, tutorials, summer schools and workshops in the field of Medical Informatics. Also a structural teacher and student exchange takes place within this partnership.
Finally, the department is responsible for running various national and international registry systems. Currently three registry systems are run: a national intensive care registry (NICE), a national cardiology and cardio-surgery interventions registry (BHN), and an international renal registry including data of over 3000 centers on numbers of patients and treatments concerning renal transplantation and dialysis (ERA-EDTA registry). A clinical registry office and a software engineering group support the registries at the department. The primary and supporting procedures carried out at the department for the medical registries are described in standard procedures. The quality Management System of medical registries at the department has been ISO9001:2000 certified in 2007. These registry systems provide a service to the clinical foundations or institutes involved, and form a vehicle for performing medical informatics research. Except for using the registry data for research, the registries themselves will form object of research. This leads to forming an important research theme, which can be termed “registry science”.
Popular KIK links:
» Technical reports
» The 2008 annual report (.pdf)
Organisation graph of the department of Medical Informatics
