Biomedical Informatics is the scientific field that deals with the storage, retrieval, sharing, and optimal use of biomedical information, data, and knowledge for problem solving and decision making. It touches on all basic and applied fields in biomedical science and is closely tied to modern information technologies, notably in the areas of computing and communication. more ...

Located on the Health Sciences campus of Columbia University, The Department of Biomedical Informatics is both an academic department within Columbia University and a provider of information services to the New York Presbyterian Healthcare Network. In addition, the group is actively involved in the transfer of information technology to industry through the Center for Advanced Technology.

The emergence of biomedical informatics as a new discipline is due in large part to rapid advances in computing and communications technology, to an increasing awareness that the knowledge base of biomedicine is essentially unmanageable by traditional paper-based methods, and to a growing conviction that the process of informed decision making is as important to modern biomedicine as is the collection of facts on which clinical decisions or research plans are made.

Our department is dedicated to achieving the finest basic and applied work in biomedical informatics and excellent educational programs in the field.

Our faculty's work includes the development and evaluation of innovative information technologies for a variety of biomedical purposes:

• to improve health care in clinical settings and in patient homes
• to facilitate new discoveries and the interpretation of complex data being generated in the basic biomedical sciences, with an emphasis on molecular biology and genomics
• to enhance the quality of imaging modalities, plus the generation and use of virtual environments
• to improve our understanding of public health and the ways in which new knowledge can be derived from information regarding populations of patients

The background of the department reflects our commitment to applied clinical systems and educational programs, with more recent emphases in the areas of bioinformatics and imaging.