Health informatics and winning the war on cancer [review of "guide to health informatics" (coiera, e.; 2015)

This 32-chapter, eight-section text can serve as a comprehensive introduction to the field of health informatics. With the accompanying e-book, the reader/user can easily access relevant, web-linked literature via the heavily web-based chapter references. The eight sections of the text cover 1) basic concepts, 2) informatics skills, 3) information systems in health care, 4) guideline- and protocol-based systems, 5) communication systems in health care, 6) language, coding, and classification, 7) clinical decision support and analytics, and 8) specialized applications for health informatics. Each chapter opens with relevant quotations, and each is logically structured and well diagrammed. Sidebar elaborations assist the novice reader in useful terminology, and “box” sections serve to give examples of items discussed. Each chapter concludes with a listing of “discussion points” for the chapter and a chapter summary. References (by chapter) are placed at the end of the text, preceded by a fairly comprehensive glossary.