After many decades of trailing other sectors of the economy, health care and health professional education have embraced information technology as a strategic resource in the last decade. Computers and the Internet have become standard means for performing other information-intensive, high-consequence activities. Much of the population now use computers for planning travel, banking, bill payment, and correspondence. Increasingly and reasonably, patients and health care professionals expect a comparable level of technological sophistication and online customer service from the health care system.

The scope of information a clinician must produce, assimilate, synthesize, record, and communicate in modern health care systems exceeds the capacity of information systems based on the movement of paper. Information technology has tremendous potential in health care that is only beginning to be actualized. The technical and theoretical details underlying clinical informatics are beyond the scope of this chapter. What follows is a concise introduction to topics and resources of general interest in this field, presented to help clinicians use information technology for the benefit of patient care.