The field remains largely unrecognised, but with medical technology booming there will soon be a demand for specialists

A friend of mine needed a CT Scan. The test involved being slowly sucked into a narrow, claustrophobic tube connected to a huge white machine. Nearby were two computer screens displaying information and complicated images.

Medicine is one of many fields in which technology is an integral part of development.

The field of healthcare informatics is at the forefront of introducing technological change in medicine.

Notes spoke to Dr Iain Ledingham, Professor Emeritus of Medical Education at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, about healthcare informatics as a career.

Ledingham was attending a press conference to launch the Second Middle East Conference on Healthcare Informatics in Dubai.

"It is not easy to define this field because it means different things to different scientists," Ledingham said.

"Yet it is commonly known as the science concerned with the analysis and dissemination of medical data using computers and technology."

Like any other developing science, the field faces many challenges. Ledingham said, "We need to know how to train people. Once trained, these specialists will need to find jobs in the healthcare industry."

Many healthcare institutions have still to recognise the importance of this field.

"In due course, if these organisations do not recruit healthcare informatics specialists, it will reflect badly on the quality of their service," Ledingham said.

However, one must consider the novelty of the field.

"I specialised in intensive care medicine, which was not well recognised until the past 15 to 20 years," he said.

What are its prospects in the UAE?

"Healthcare informatics is developing slowly," Ledingham said.

"The UAE has already set the wheels in motion to create specialists who will have the needed expertise."

In the next five years, he expects the UAE to witness a revolution in healthcare informatics.

"The government has started to notice the need for this science to raise the quality of health provisions. Organisations will seem less than adequate unless they have specialists who are knowledgeable about the quality of the medical information provided by machines," he said.

Ledingham believes healthcare informatics is one of the most exciting future disciplines in the healthcare industry.

"The skills of specialists in the UAE will be rare and very attractive in the beginning. They will be highly paid and appreciated," he said.