Introduction to Clinical Informatics

In less than 242 pages, skipping the appendix and other supporting pages, Degoulet covers the field while limiting references to specific technologies that quickly become obsolete, giving readers the gist of Informatics with far fewer words than any similar book in the field. Short text does not mean lacking content, as the judicious use of diagrams describe what may require many words [as this review's run-on-sentences demonstrate, terseness can aid quick comprehension]. Whether the English translation superseded the original French text, I know not. I reviewed this text when first released in 1996 and two years later, Clinical Informatics remains the core text in the four classes I teach in "computers in medicine".Marvin E. Gozum, MD Director of Clinical Informatics Thomas Jefferson University