ABC of Informatics

It becomes increasingly important for medical professionals to have an understanding of informatics and its background. The information systems and information technologies are widely used in today’s health care systems, and therefore it is necessary to support education in this area for both medical students and for physicians who graduated before informatics was applied in the field of medicine. The aims of Informatics should be oriented on improving knowledge about computers’ terms, methods and tools. The student should acquire the knowledge that allows them to reach the appropriate computer skills. These have to be sufficient to use Informatics elements in processing of given tasks and/or scientific works in an effective way.

Here summarized review materials introduce:

• ECDL – the world's leading end-user computer skills certification programme,
• Basic terms – definitions of most commonly used terms in computer science,
• Computer history – brief summary of computers’ development,
• Hardware – review of technical equipment of personal computers,
• Software – general description of software products,
• Computer networks – characteristics of computer networks,
• Data protection – basic principles of information safety.