Centre for Health Informatics, Trinity College, Dublin

The Centre for Health Informatics is an inter-disciplinary unit and brings together expertise from the fields of Computer Science, Engineering and Health Sciences and has the general objective of applying such expertise to promoting and furthering the application of Information Technology to Healthcare. The Centre's activities includes carrying out research at both a national and international level, the provision of educational courses, and the promotion of health informatics through awareness programmes and other avenues.

The Centre for Health Informatics in Trinity College was established in 1991. The Centre brings together academic and research staff in the Faculties of Health Sciences and Engineering, in association with colleagues in St James's Hospital, the Federated Dublin Voluntary Hospitals, the new hospital at Tallaght and the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Objectives:

• to provide a centre of excellence for research in health informatics
• to develop courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level in health informatics which emphasise the inter-disciplinary nature of the subject
• to promote the efficient and cost-effective use of Information Technology in the health sector.

The Centre, through the Department of Computer Science, has played a leading role in a number of major European research projects. Details of the projects on which the Centre is currently actively engaged are listed below.

• The Centre is leading the Synapses Project, a major pan-European project part-funded under the EU Health Telematics Programme. The 26 partners which make up the Synapses consortium are drawn from European software companies, hospitals, research institutes and universities in 14 different countries. The aim of Synapses is to facilitate the sharing of electronic patient records and related healthcare information about patients between members of the healthcare team. The current inability to share such information simply, securely and consistently results in unnecessary duplication of investigations, and ultimately a delay in ensuring that the patient receives the appropriate treatment as quickly as possible. The results of the project will be demonstrated next year in the Intensive Care Unit at St. James's Hospital, and at 10 other sites, representing a range of clinical domains, across Europe.
• SynEX is a two-year project funded under the EU Health Telematics Programme which aims to build in the results of Synapses and integrate them with the results of other significant Health Telematics projects concerned with community care, nursing and terminology.
• Milestone is a two-year project funded by industry, which is developing a methodology for migrating legacy information systems into modern, open computing environments. One of the target domains for this work is health.
• KIMSAC is a three-year project funded by the EU ACTS Programme and is concerned with the development of a multimedia kiosk which will provide information to members of the general public on social welfare assistance.
• TUDOR is a three-year project funded under the EU Esprit Information Technology programme. The aim of the project is to build a toolset for the development of integrated data-intensive applications in heterogeneous, distributed computing environments. Health is one of the major application domains.
• Finally, the Centre is developing and implementing a major awareness programme in the application of IT and telecommunications for the Irish health sector. The Programme, Medichi, which is funded from European Structural Funds, will take the form of a set of multimedia presentations to be delivered at several locations across the country. The programme will target all sections of the health sector demystifying the jargon, illustrating by example the potential of the appropriate use of IT. The emphasis will be on what is achievable with today's technology, rather than on being too futuristic. The aim is to empower users so that they are in a position to embrace IT to provide more efficient and cost-effective delivery of healthcare within the context of the Information Society.

The educational activities of the Centre include a part-time Diploma/MSc in Health Informatics, which brings together postgraduate students from both computing, and health science backgrounds. The Centre also participates in one Tempus and one Erasmus Programme in Health Informatics. Both involve lecturers from Trinity/St. James's giving advanced courses abroad and, in the case of the Erasmus programme, postgraduate students from Trinity have attended specialist courses abroad.

Professor Jane Grimson
Faculty of Engineering and Systems Sciences
Trinity College
Dublin 2
Phone: + 353 1 608 1594
Fax: + 353 1 608 2512

Professor Rory O'Moore
Central Pathology Laboratory
St. James's Hospital
James's Street
Dublin 8
Phone: + 353 1 453 7941 Extn. 2636
Fax: + 353 1 453 7594