Medical Colleges identified core MI skills that should be developed by medical
students [7]. They include but are not limited to the following: accessing, evaluating
and using proper information resources for life-long professional development;
maintaining and improving computer literacy skills; working with electronic health
records; following ethical and information confidentiality principles in routine
professional practice; using clinical decision support systems; disseminating digital
medical information among the population; utilizing electronic communication tools
for distance medical aid and searching for medical information in electronic library
databases.
Thus, the main goal of studying MI as an academic discipline is the development
of MI competency by medical students. The practical value of this competency consists
in responsible usage of medical information and communication technologies in
professional practice. Thereby, future medical practitioners are able to process medical
data and information, make right medical decisions, give medical care at distance,
conduct scientific research in medicine, manage electronic health records, etc.
Studying MI as an academic discipline also enables medical students to acquire basic
knowledge about the possibilities and limitations of modern information systems, their
structure, advantages and disadvantages of their usage as well as the principles of their
evaluation and selection.
Nowadays, MI is a relatively young multidisciplinary specialty at the junction of
medicine, computer science, programming, statistics, computer simulation, etc. First
MI professionals did not have a formal education in MI. They were mainly healthcare
workers that gained their competency by applying computers in daily professional
activities in order to facilitate or automate their routine tasks.
The history of the development of MI as a specialty in the system of higher
education began in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It should also be mentioned that first MI-
related programs derived from informatics programs that provided application of
informatics tools in medicine. A typical example here is MI program introduced in
Germany in 1972. It was a collaborative initiative of the University of Heidelberg and
the University of Applied Sciences Heilbronn. This educational program’s purpose was
professional training of specialists possessing skills to use computer technology for
medical purposes [12].
The number of such programs was limited till the 1990’s when information and
communication technologies experienced a quick evolution and decrease in price. It
gave rise to numerous MI educational projects nationally and internationally. Thus, at
the beginning of the 21
st
century, MI as a specialty is developing dynamically, and its
tasks are multifunctional. First and foremost, its goal is the professional training of
specialists that are to improve the population’s health quality through computerizing
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