Recognising e-health as part of a cohesive professional community.

This paper identifies a mechanism for specific professional registration in order to sustain a holistic community fit to practice in informatics to support the health domain. It considers risks and opportunities that have an international resonance, and comments on the areas where multi-national activity could provide additional impetus to improvement of the quality of the profession of health informatics overall. It puts the case for the over-arching term health informatics to be used to maximize synergy and drive up quality, whilst still recognising the specificity and place for more focused descriptive terms. Whilst grounded in the contemporary UK environment, the principles explored in this paper are currently being considered for adoption internationally.

Validating national informatics policy--the importance of operational consensus to influence positive developments.

The National Health Service in England faces reorganisation of services on a very regular basis. In 2002 a 'Long Term Review of Health Trends', commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer indicated the need for a substantially larger investment in informatics to support the delivery of better healthcare overall. Subsequent to the issue of this report, the Spending Review confirmed an investment of pound 2.3 Billion (approximately $3.7 Bn) for the period to 2005 for NHS informatics, subject to performance. This paper describes the actions taken by the national representative society (the British Computer Society Health Informatics Committee) to ensure that the views of those in the field were taken into account in facilitating the best possible outcomes from this investment. In addition, the initiative established has confirmed the ongoing priorities for involvement in health informatics, regardless of professional role, in support of healthcare. The outputs and insights gained from two years of this initiative provide useful points for thought about health informatics and health management in other countries and under different models of care to that of the NHS in England.