(Bio) medical informatics in the next decade

Even though medical informatics is most often viewed from the perspective of its host disciplines in clinical and biologic medicine, it has an identity and agenda of its own. This paper is an attempt to promote discussion about the long-term role and agenda for medical informatics as a discipline into the next decade. The discussion has two main lines of argument, one about the "engineering" goals of informatics and the other about the "basic research" goals. These are, of course, influenced by ongoing of developments in computing, communications, and software infrastructures, but informatics is now mature enough that many of its goals transcend these changes.