About the Division

The Division of Health Sciences Informatics is an interdisciplinary, academic division in the School of Medicine that brings together a wide range of resources and expertise in health sciences information management, communication and technology. Through educational, research and service activities, the Division seeks to advance the development and use of information technology for decision-making, research, health care delivery and individual academic growth, and to increase the awareness of these resources among the Johns Hopkins health sciences community. Current research areas in the Division include medical informatics, genome informatics, information management, consumer health informatics, computer-based documentation systems for point-of-care, informatics and evidence-based medicine, biomedical editing and communication, and electronic publishing.

The concept of creating an academic unit growing out of the Library and an informatics research and education laboratory was articulated in the mid-1980s by Nina Matheson, former director of the Welch Library. The first academic unit established was the Laboratory for Applied Research in Academic Information; the work of the Laboratory resulted in the Genome Database’s coming to Hopkins and in the online version of Dr. Victor McKusick’s Mendelian Inheritance in Man. The Division of Health Sciences Informatics was established in late 1993 with David T. Kingsbury, Ph.D., as the first director. The current director (interim) of the Division is Nancy K. Roderer, who assumed the position with her arrival at Hopkins in 2000.

The Division is separate from, but closely coordinated with, the Welch Medical Library , which
Ms. Roderer also directs. Named for Dr. William H. Welch and honoring his role in the creation of the library and in the establishment of the Department of the History of Medicine, the Welch Medical Library was founded in 1929 through a merger of libraries throughout the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Over its 70-year history, the Welch Library and its directors have played a leadership role in the management and delivery of health sciences information, with a particular focus on the development of innovative applications of new technologies. In addition to providing access to the published literature (print and electronic) and numerous scientific databases, the Welch Library offers educational and outreach programs to assist clinical and basic science faculty, staff and students in using electronic information resources to access critical scientific information and to analyze and communicate their research findings.

The Legacy of Health Sciences Informatics at Johns Hopkins

Three seminal events in the field of biomedical informatics are closely associated with the Division’s Welch Medical Library: First, the library collections were brought under computer management by Richard A. Polacsek, M.D., Library Director from 1969 to 1984. The Welch Library was one of the first to offer online searching of the literature to its patrons using the National Library of Medicine’s public domain software, ILS. The Welch also developed its own integrated library system, one of only three such locally-developed systems in the country. In addition, Dr. Polacsek initiated Welch's satellite library system, providing dispersed services as part of the computer-based network.

Second, under the director Nina Matheson (1984-1993), the Welch Library moved into a pioneering role in the management and delivery of information through research into medical informatics and in innovative applications of new technologies. Ms. Matheson's original ideas helped reshape the thinking about the changing role of the health sciences library. The frequently cited Matheson-Cooper report (developed just before she came to Hopkins) was the historic beginning of the Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems (IAIMS) concept.

Third, Victor A. McKusick, M.D., played a large part in creating the field of medical genetics and in bringing this specialty into the mainstream of academic medicine. In 1966 he published the first edition of Mendelian Inheritance in Man, the definitive source of information on human genes and genetic disorders. Later, in collaboration with the National Library of Medicine, he constructed the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) database. This invaluable genetics reference is in use by clinicians and researchers around the world in a version created for the World Wide Web by the National Center for Biotechnology Information.