Medical Informatics at the Technical University of Gdańsk

By Jacek Rumiński

1. Technical University of Gdańsk

The history of the Technical University of Gdańsk is long and complex. It is a part of the history of Gdańsk, which has recently celebrated its millennium. Our University history is marked by two basic dates: October 6, 1904 and May 24, 1945. The first is connected with the creation of the High Technical School in Gdańsk endowed with full academic rights and aiming at spreading knowledge principally in Pomeranian area. The other is associated with the conversion of the existing university into a Polish University, thus terminating the endeavours of Polish people for the Polish Technical Academic School.

2. Department of Medical and Ecological Electronics

As a part of Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics - the Department of Medical and Ecological Electronics is involved in teaching and research in the filed of application of electronics, telecommunications and informatics in medicine and ecology.

Since September 1996, the staff of the Department  have been working to fulfill the TEMPUS JEP project known as 'CEMET-Centre of Medical Technologies'.

The main objective of this project is the creation of the 'Centre of Medical Technologies'. This will be a new inter- university institution located at TUG but using distributed technical infrastructure and staff of all Polish institutions involved. Concentration in one place of co-coordinated education, and in the future, research activities,  should  help strongly the introduction of highly professional expertise in this extremely fast developing field of technology.

The aim of this centre will be the promotion of multidisciplinary study in the field of medical engineering, medical physics and medical informatics, and involving the co-operation of many different institutions, faculties and research groups.

The most important objective is the creation of a 'Laboratory of Quality Control and Quality Assurance' in medical technologies, informatics techniques and management. This laboratory is so important because of the urgent need to meet procedures, standards and regulations that exist in the EU, where Poland hopes to become a full member by the end of this century.

Not less important is the introduction and development of new degree courses and restructuring of existing degree courses and their content:

1. At TUG, a new degree course of Medical Informatics will be created. This course includes an application of informatics in medical diagnostics, treatment and management.
2. Postgraduate courses devoted to physician will be extended by inclusion of modern technologies or new courses will be developed.
3. Postgraduate PhD study will be opened in new medical technology and informatics for TUG and MUG students.
   Special action will be undertaken for short courses for physicians and medical staff retraining in new medical technologies in co-operation with County Health Department (WZ) to meet labour market needs.
4. The existed Medical Electronics course will be reconstructed to cover modern medical diagnostics methods.
5. New BSc courses will be also developed for new job offering in the field of medical engineering and medical informatics.

Additional tasks of the Centre are development of universities structural capacities to co-operate with enterprises and other local bodies and to introduce or improve universities delivery of continuing education. The objectives will be received during full 3 year period of project.

3. Medical Informatics review

The department has undertaken a comprehensive review of medical informatics education and research.  Since  the beginning of the project, about 30 different courses and workshops were offered to students, engineers and medical staff. Subjects offered were mainly devoted to application of electronics, telecommunications and informatics in medicine, for example, image formation, processing and analysis in medicine; visualisation methods in medicine; applications of computers in medicine.

One of the objective of the project was to create a new degree course of Medical Informatics. With support of our foreign partners we proposed preliminary course schedule to be accepted in the future. Because of extensive local discussion about the place  of Medical Informatics ( MI)  in education and research, the short review of publications and WWW pages about institutions and   courses devoted to MI have been done.

The first problem to be answered was whether MI can be regarded as a separate discipline, or a specific application of informatics to be taught at medical schools. The excellent discussion was presented in the following articles in 'Methods of Information in Medicine', 33:285-289, 1994:

• R.HAux, F.J.Leven: Twenty Years Medical Informatics Education at Heidelberg/Heilbronn: Evaluation of Specialized Curriculum for Medical Informatics
• D.J.Protti, et al.,: Can Health/Medical Informatics be Regarded as a Separate Discipline?

These articles provide good description of the existing role of MI and conclude that MI can be a separate discipline. It is shown that MI has a clear place between theoretical, practical and technical Informatics.  Good illustration of these concepts can be found at website of  the University of Leipzig.

Presented slides introduce all students to the main goals of MI teaching, course schedule and job situation. The problem of job perspectives have been also presented in W. Frey et al.,: Medical Informatics Heidelberg/Heilbronn: Graduates’ Experiences and Job Situation, Methods of Information in Medicine, 33:290-298, 1994.

The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) plays a very important role in promoting MI play.  IMIA has participants in more that 40 countries who work mainly at regional and national levels. It is important to mention Working Group1 (WG1) which works on  health and medical informatics education.

At the website of this group, the list of institutions and courses devoted to MI is presented. This small database is extremely useful to find contact persons and websites of institutions and courses.  In Europe,  more that 20 countries participate in the 'European Federation for Medical Informatics'.  EFMI organises the  Medical Informatics Europe congresses.  EFMI also supports different magazines, for example, 'International Journal of Medical Informatics' (formerly International Journal of  Biomedical Computing), 'Medical Informatics' and Health Informatics Europe

More that one hundred WWW servers present pages devoted to MI education and research. In case of MI education, courses are often offered in the framework of interdisciplinary departments with members from informatics and computer sciences, engineering or medical faculties. Given that offices of MI departments are usually situated at one of those three faculties.  For a list of MI links and examples of health and medical informatics courses, please see the website at the top of this page.

4. Conclusion

Medical Informatics is a well described scientific and educational discipline offered to engineers and medical specialists. Taking into account all aspects of information in medicine, for example, medical information systems, PACS, expert systems, decision systems, medical databases, security and safety in medical applications of informatics, etc., and the explosive development of informatics in medicine e.g. EU framework projects objectives and priorities, it is clear that education and training in the field of medical informatics is very important and needed. Especially in Poland with the rapid change in technology in health sector and because of huge reforms of health care and social systems the professionals are really required.