Understanding Healthcare Information

Citation

Shelton, M.E. (2012), "Understanding Healthcare Information", Collection Building, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 32-32. https://doi.org/10.1108/01604951211199164

The field of medicine produces a very extensive and varied quantity of information. Practitioners themselves take years to grasp the scope of knowledge that is necessary to be qualified, and then they must continue to work to stay up to date with the constantly changing information. In Understanding Healthcare Information, Dr Lyn Robinson grapples with the expansive field of healthcare information in order to make it more understandable and succeeds in creating a work that is scholarly, extremely well thought out, well organized and informative at many levels.

At first glance the chapters appear to be very similar to any work that tries to explain the information in a field. There are chapters that focus on the history of healthcare, the producers and users of healthcare information, how the information is organized, and the information sources and retrieval tools prominent in the field. Yet when reading this book, one finds that the author takes us a step deeper, helping us to really understand the landscape and the constructs that make it what it is. For example, when addressing the users of healthcare information, the author very adeptly examines different aspects of information behavior and how it affects the way in which the content is used. A section on how researchers study this behavior in this field is a topic rarely seen in these types of books. In the chapter on knowledge management, the author covers, and then steps beyond, the typical library role by delving into how information organization applies to medical records management and other kinds of healthcare records, such as records pertaining to healthcare facilities. Throughout each chapter the author successfully paints a crisp picture covering many broad topics while also integrating extensive detail within these topics.

At the end of each chapter there is a thorough list of references. The author also provides further reading citations for those who wish to explore topics in more depth. URLs are relegated to lists at the end of the chapters as well. This book is highly recommended for any academic or medical library. Librarians will also find this book to be a scholarly addition to their own professional collections.