INFORMATICS IN HEALTH CARE

ECU celebrates new degree program with inaugural symposium

A participant at the symposium studies one of the poster presentations at the first Informatics in Health Care Symposium. (Photos by Elbert Kennard)

East Carolina University held a Health Care Symposium Sept. 26 at the ECU Heart Institute.

The symposium spotlighted informatics in all aspects of health and health care, showcased the development and use of health information technologies on campus and in the community and featured interdisciplinary collaborations in research and development.

Dr. Xiaoming Zeng, chairman of East Carolina University’s Department of Health Services and Information Management, welcomes participants to the event.

Health informatics is a discipline at the intersection of information science, computer science and health care. It deals with the resources, devices, and methods required for the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information in health and medicine.

The symposium hosted by the Department of Health Services and Information Management celebrated the beginning of the new master’s degree in health informatics and information management recently approved by the UNC Board of Governors to start in fall 2013 in the College of Allied Health Sciences.

Attendance at the event included 231 online participants and 169 who came in person.

Information on the new degree program can be found at http://www.ecu.edu/cs-dhs/hsim/hiim.cfm.