School of Health Information Sciences, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, USA.
J Biomed Inform. 2010 Feb;43(1):104-10. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2009.08.006. Epub 2009 Aug 13.
Biomedical informatics lacks a clear and theoretically-grounded definition. Many proposed definitions focus on data, information, and knowledge, but do not provide an adequate definition of these terms. Leveraging insights from the philosophy of information, we define informatics as the science of information, where information is data plus meaning. Biomedical informatics is the science of information as applied to or studied in the context of biomedicine. Defining the object of study of informatics as data plus meaning clearly distinguishes the field from related fields, such as computer science, statistics and biomedicine, which have different objects of study. The emphasis on data plus meaning also suggests that biomedical informatics problems tend to be difficult when they deal with concepts that are hard to capture using formal, computational definitions. In other words, problems where meaning must be considered are more difficult than problems where manipulating data without regard for meaning is sufficient. Furthermore, the definition implies that informatics research, teaching, and service should focus on biomedical information as data plus meaning rather than only computer applications in biomedicine.
生物医学信息缺乏明确和有理论基础的定义。许多提出的定义都集中在数据、信息和知识上，但没有对这些术语提供充分的定义。利用信息哲学的见解，我们将信息学定义为信息科学，其中信息是数据加意义。生物医学信息学是将信息科学应用于或在生物医学背景下研究的科学。将信息学的研究对象定义为数据加意义，明确将该领域与计算机科学、统计学和生物医学等相关领域区分开来，这些领域的研究对象不同。强调数据加意义还表明，当涉及到难以使用正式的、计算定义来捕捉的概念时，生物医学信息学问题往往更具难度。换句话说，需要考虑意义的问题比只考虑不考虑意义的数据操作问题更难。此外，该定义意味着信息学的研究、教学和服务应该侧重于生物医学信息作为数据加意义，而不仅仅是生物医学中的计算机应用。
