Better informed: an overview of health informatics.

Healthcare informatics is increasing in importance both for healthcare administrators and medical and dental practitioners. Governments across the developed world are initiating major national health IT programmes. At the same time, future best medical and dental practice will increasingly depend on computer-based support tools, although disagreement remains about the effectiveness of current support tools. Over the longer term, future informatics tools, combined with other medical and dental technology modalities, promise more adaptive, patient-focused and efficient healthcare and education for the practitioner and the patient.