Ground-breaking new book advocates for the advancement of theory in the field of health informatics

The 2019 MedInfo and Context Sensitive Health Informatics conferences marked the official launch of a ground-breaking new book co-edited by Philip Scott, Professor Andrew Georgiou and Ms Nicolette de Keizer, which represented an international and interdisciplinary collaboration on the potential application of theory in the field of health informatics, and featured many of AIHI’s researchers including Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite, Professor Enrico Coiera, Professor Johanna Westbrook, Dr Robyn Clay-Williams and Dr Valentina Lichtner.

Attendees of the 2019 Context Sensitive Health Informatics conference were given a preview of the ground-breaking new title “Applied Interdisciplinary Theory in Health Informatics: A Knowledge Base for Practitioners” ahead of its official launch at MedInfo 2019. The book launch was accompanied by a lively panel session at MedInfo 2019.

The panel included Associate Professor Farah Magrabi and was chaired by two of its Editors, Professor Andrew Georgiou and Ms Nicolette de Keizer. The new book brings together contributions from leading thinkers in health informatics across the world to bring theoretical underpinning to the field of health informatics, widely believed to be an “under-theorised” field of knowledge. It contributes to the establishment of a common scientific terminology among informatics scholars and explores the challenge of diverse perspectives about what constitutes “theory” and what makes it useful. Panellists advocated for how the significance of health informatics theory might be promoted and theoretical work in this area advanced. It is now available in print and open access worldwide.