Question

What makes Health Informatics so difficult?

How do we narrow the “semantic gap”?

Answer 1

Ans)Health Information is so difficult-

- Because medicine does not contain strictly form (data)-based problems, it is difficult to reduce recognizing a sick patient into data so it's much more difficult capture computationally; Biomedical information is imperfect: incomplete information (potentially obtainable), uncertain information (can't objectively determine true or false), imprecise information, vague information, inconsistent information; a computer would have to be explicitly programmed to make judgments based on these variances.

The difference between data and information is meaning (semantics) - the so-called semantic gap-

- There is a large semantic gap between health status and health information as philosophers who study information draw a distinction between data (syntax) and information, defined as meaningful data.

- The fundamental problem is that existing technology can store, manipulate, and transmit data but not information.

- Thus the utility of HIT is limited to the extent to which data approximates meaning, and, unfortunately there is a large gap between health care data and health care information.

- Because the difference between data and information is meaning (semantics), we call this the “semantic gap.”