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From  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. More information about history of Technical University of Gdańsk (TUG) can be found at: http://www.pg.gda.pl/InfoPG/historia/hist_en.html

The following faculties are currently working at TUG:

• Faculty of Architecture
• Faculty of Civil Engineering
• Faculty of Chemistry
• Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics
• Faculty of Electrical and Control Engineering
• Faculty of Applied Physics and Mathematics
• Faculty of Environmental Engineering
• Faculty of Mechanical Engineering
• Faculty of Ocean Engineering and Ship Technology
• Faculty of Management and Economics

2. Department of Medical and Ecological Electronics

 As a part of Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics— Department of Medical and Ecological Electronics  www.med.eti.pg.gda.pl ) is involved in teaching and research in the filed of application of electronics, telecommunications and informatics in medicine and ecology. Especially since September 1996 staff of the Department  have worked to fulfil the TEMPUS JEP project titled:"CEMET-Centre of Medical Technologies". The main objective of this project is 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 for co-ordination of education and in the future also research activities should strongly help in introduction of highly professional expertise in this extremely fast developing field of technology. The aim of this centre will be promotion of multidisciplinary study in the field of medical engineering, medical physics and medical informatics, involving co-operation of different institutions and many of faculties and research groups.

* The most important for this objective is 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 existing in EU, where Poland we hope will be acting as a full member by the end of this Century.

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

a) 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.
b) Postgraduate courses devoted to physician will be extended by inclusion of modern technologies or new courses will be developed.
c) Postgraduate PhD study will be opened in new medical technology and informatics for TUG and MUG students.
d) 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.
e) The existed Medical Electronics course will be reconstructed to cover modern medical diagnostics methods.
f)  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 the project.

3. Medical Informatics review

Since the beginning of the project about 30 different courses and workshops were offered to students, engineers and medical staff. Subject offered were mainly devoted to application of electronics, telecommunications and informatics in medicine e.g.: Image formation in medicine, Image processing and analysis in medicine, Visualisation methods in medicine, Applications of computers in medicine, etc. 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 place  of Medical Informatics - MI - in education and research, the short review of publications and WWW pages about institution and  courses devoted to MI have been done.

The first problem to be answered was if MI can be regarded as a Separate Discipline or it is a specific application of informatics to be taught at Schools of Medicine. (The excellent discussion have been presented in Methods of Information in Medicine 1994. 33: 285–289: RH Aux, F.J.Leven. Twenty Years Medical Informatics Education at Heidelberg/Heilbronn: Evaluation of Specialized Curriculum for Medical Informatics; and D.J.Protti, et al. Can Health/Medical Informatics be Regarded as a Separate Discipline?)

These articles provide good description of 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. Perfect illustration for these concepts can be found on home page of University of Leipzig: http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/ifi/abteilungen/db/medizin/medinf-1.html

Presented slides introduce all students with 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 1994. 33:290-298.

The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) plays a very important role in promoting MI. IMIA has members in more that 40 countries  who work mainly at regional and national levels. It is important to mention Working Group 1 (WG1) which works on  Health and Medical Informatics Education.  On the home page of this group ( www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~d16/ ) a list of institutions and courses devoted to MI is presented. This small database is extremely useful to find contact persons, home pages of institutions and courses, etc. In Europe more that 20 countries participate in European Federation for Medical Informatics: http://s1.cxwms.ac.uk/Academic/AGPU/staffpag/robinson/interest/efmi_wg7/efmiaims.html

Since 1978 EFMI has organized MI congresses eg Medical Informatics Europe. EFMI support different magazines eg International Journal of Medical Informatics (formerly International Journal of  Biomedical Computing) - (www.elsevier.com:80/inca/publications/store/5/0/6/0/4/0/ ), Medical Informatics and Health Informatics Europe. Another well know MI journal is: Methods of Information in Medicine (www.schattauer.de/zs/startz.asp?load=/zs/methods/main.asp ).

More that one hundred WWW servers present pages devoted to MI education and research. MI education courses are often offered in the framework of interdisciplinary departments with members from informatics or computer sciences faculties, engineering faculties and medical faculties.Offices of MI departments are usually situated in one of those three faculties. The largest lists of MI links can be found at:

http://dmi-www.mc.duke.edu/dukemi/misc/links.html
www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/bin/user/~d16/w3-msql/imia/SearchDB.html
www.mi.unimaas.nl/mined.htm
www.ukl.uni-heidelberg.de/mi/inter.htm
www.ics.uci.edu/~biomed/medinfoPointers.htm

Some examples of medical/health informatics courses are presented at:

www-bmti.tu-ilmenau.de/ebmti/educate/lehre1.htm
www.ukl.uni-heidelberg.de/mi/teach.htm#mi
www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/ifi/abteilungen/db/medizin/medinf-1.html
hst-hu-mit.mit.edu/programs/mip.html#mi_masters
www.city.ac.uk/mim/mscmi.htm
www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/bin/user/~d16/w3-msql/imia/SearchDB.html
www.ami.liu.se/
www.dis.port.ac.uk/msc/infosys/index.htm
www.ics.uci.edu/~biomed/
www.akh-wien.ac.at/imc/english/about_imc_en.html

4. Conclusion

Medical/Health Informatics is well described scientific and educational disciplines, as well as for engineers as for medical specialists. Taking into account all aspects of information in medicine, eg 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 eg EU framework projects objectives and priorities, it is clear that education and training in the field of medical informatics is very important and needed. This is especially so in Poland due to the rapid change in technology in the healthcare sector. Also, because of huge reforms of healthcare and social systems the professionals are really required.