Health Informatics 3.0 and other Increasingly Dispersed Technologies Require Even Greater Trust: Promoting Safe Evidence-based Health Informatics

Background: Health informatics is generally less committed to a scientific evidence-based approach than any other area of health science, which is an unsound position. Introducing the new Web 3.0 paradigms into health IT applications can unleash a further great potential, able to integrate and distribute data from multiple sources. The counter side is that it makes the user and the patient evermore dependent on the ‚black box‘ of the system, and the re-use of the data remote from the author and initial context. Thus anticipatory consideration of uses, and proactive analysis of evidence of effects, are imperative, as only when a clinical technology can be proven to be trustworthy and safe should it be implemented widely - as is the case with other health technologies. Objectives: To argue for promoting evidence-based health informatics as systems become more powerful and pro-active yet more dispersed and remote; and evaluation as the means of generating the necessary scientific evidence base. To present ongoing IMIA and EFMI initiatives in this field. Methods: Critical overview of recent developments in health informatics evaluation, alongside the precedents of other health technologies, summarising current initiatives and the new challenges presented by Health Informatics 3.0. Results: Web 3.0 should be taken as an opportunity to move health informatics from being largely unaccountable to one of being an ethical and responsible science-based domain. Recent and planned activities of the EFMI and IMIA working groups have significantly progressed key initiatives. Conclusions: Concurrent with the emergence of Web 3.0 as a means of new-generation diffuse health information systems comes an increasing need for an evidence-based culture in health informatics.