Informatics Books

Rebecca's review is spot-on. I could read this book several times and get something new out of it each time. Ellis succinctly captures the changes in consumer-marketer interaction and the new 21st century value exchange and does a great job of putting it in historical and philosophical context.

Most books on business (particularly those by self-proclaimed "gurus") seize on a single idea. With terrier-like tenacity they explain it, illustrate it, present case studies of it, then explain it yet again, until a readers feels she's entered some sort of textual version of "Groundhog's Day."

"Marketing in the In-Between," takes the opposite approach. It packs so many clusters of thought, ideas, revelations and connections on every page, the reader will need to repeatedly dip in to glean all the thoughts. It challenges readers to truly ponder and to question the basic precepts and practices upon which marketing is based.

Interesting how Ms. Hayles does not mention the transhuman or transhumanism, Max More and his seminal essay "Becoming Posthuman" written several years before Ms. Hayles book was published. Anyone using the book in their course work might want to think about this.

This book is worth the effort. Or maybe all the effort you'll put into this triggers a cognitive dissonance reaction: I just spent 4 hours reading one chapter, so it must have been good. Right? Right?

This book is good, if only for her obvious reverence for the cyberpunk grandaddy PKD (Phil K Dick if you don't know already). Whether or not you accept her premise that we are already "posthuman" she considers her subject matter in a most interesting and relevent way, bringing in fiction that relates to the subject, as well as the history of computing and cybernetics (with some fun little anecdotes about the one and only Norbert Weiner). If you're a geek or into future-minded philosophy, pick this one up. She makes some convincing arguments, it just takes a good long while to decipher what those arguments actually are.

This is probably one of the hardest books I have ever read--with no background in either philosophy or cybernetics, much of what Hayles discusses is just plain incomprehensible. I also found it difficult to accept the idea of humans already being "post-human." If you are interested in deep philosophical writings on technology and the human condition, with links to literature, read this. If you don't really care about the post-human, skip it.

Yes, this is 22nd Century thinking today. I was fortunate enough to meet the author at a LA FUTURISTS SOCIETY meeting where she was a guest speaker. She looks ordinary-- like a college professor-type, speaks clearly but her writing is the extraordinary talent. She combines humanism and science to see how virtual bodies and informatics are influencing how we live, work and love. One of those books that yearns for you to write in the margins and put your notes in the back. Pages and pages of notes on my copy. No one will share this copy, don't even ask!!!! Not an easy read but well worth the journey. I love to read books in hours or days but this one took weeks (in between other reading) and it was well worth every minute, hour, day spent. Perfect book for this summer when the MACHINES ARE TAKING OVER on our screens at movies and television. The crossover from cybernetics to literature is what is so fascinating. I can't begin to summarize all that I learned and all the questions that it brought up for me to seek out more info. Belongs on every science and literature teacher's shelf. One of the books they should require for every engineer and techie at the beginning of their careers. Make way for the future!!!!!

This is an important, impressive, and infuriating book that should be read by all those interested in the posthuman movement, the possibility of a cyborg future, and the nature of cyberspace. I agree with other reviewers that it is a penetrating analysis of the cultural revolution taking place in information and what it means for human (and posthuman) society. It is important as a powerful statement of the post-modern concern with embodiment and what that might portend for the future of humanity. It is impressive as a wide-ranging analysis of the inter-linkages of technology, culture, and the human body. It is infuriating because of the jargon-filled text and convoluted nature of the writing. That last criticism is one that is generic for post-modern works such as this, and certainly not a specific criticism of this book.

UCLA professor of English N. Katherine Hayles makes the case that the body (or lack thereof) is central to this posthuman future. She notes that the body is lost in the information age, as disembodied voices/knowledge/data came to dominate thinking about a posthuman evolutionary stage. She also explores the development of the concept of the cyborg, and what the merger of humans and machines might eventually come to mean. She undertakes the analysis through a series of case studies. One of the best of them is her chapter on the science fiction of Philip K. Dick, whose novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was made into the classic feature film "Blade Runner." His obsession with artificial life, and by extension "real" life, consumed much of Dick's writing and has much to say about the essence of the posthuman.

The most challenging and interesting part of this book is Hayles argument that Homo sapiens as a species are endangered in ways we have never conceptualized. Hayles notes that the rise of artificial life will lead to the next stage of the evolution of life on Earth. "If the name of the game is processing information," she writes, "it is only a matter of time until intelligent machines replace us as our evolutionary heirs. Whether we decide to fight them or join them by becoming computers ourselves, the days of the human race are numbered" (p. 243). The author does not view this with serious trepidation. As her last sentence in the book states: "Although some current versions of the posthuman point toward the anti-human and the apocalyptic, we can craft others that will be conducive to the long-range survival of humans and of the other life-forms, biological and artificial, with whom we share the planet and ourselves" (p. 291).

I think Hayles would agree with the Borg's slogan, "resistance is futile," but not with the dystopian concept of the human future it offers.

I really should like this book - it's highly related to what I do and I love my job. There were a number of good nuggets of information and references that I will find useful however I found I had a great deal of trouble reading the actual text - I found it boring. The large print, gaps between the lines and the stretched filled spacing of each line made it difficult to quickly scan paragraphs and grasp the gist of what was being said, even when rereading. The grid diagrams were also problematic - they all had the same look - there was little that was memorable about them. The authors also often used round about wording where more direct statements would have been clearer.

As an experiment I typed a couple of random paragraphs from the text and found that they made a lot more sense. I also showed the text around to some of my co-workers and got the same reactions. Given the title of the book it is somewhat ironic that it should have this kind of a problem, but the book deals with principles for the automated transformation of content, not effective presentation style.

Better editing would have made a better book.

Component modeling, analysis of information exchanges, and
application services usage patterns are critical areas to focus
on in designing internal and external interfaces exposed by
enterprises, ASPs/SaaS, and other consumer-oriented internet
services. We have many good examples of scalable, evolvable,
easy to integrate and interoperable Web Services API in the
consumer-oriented internet industry currently. The areas
covered in the DOCUMENT ENGINEERING is very relevant to
architects, product managers, developers and technology
executives. I especially found the design patterns and process
discussion helpful. I would recommend this book to anyone
interested in services oriented application platforms, internal
and external enterprise integration to employ in the design
phase since it covers an effective methodology of designing
interfaces based on the document-centric component model.

Zahid Ahmed
San Jose, CA

The book is a refreshingly understandable approach to explaining Service Oriented Architecture, Web Services and the Semantic Web. Other texts often drown the reader in hugely verbose XML examples. But here, the authors achieve clarity in discussing the essence of the above concepts. The XML snippets are clear, without being overly long.

You can also see why interoperability issues might inevitably arise in a loosely coupled Web Services environment. Often due to differing semantic meanings attached to the same fields in a common document structure. The book touches upon hard problems of ontologies and how the different meanings might be accomodated in a realistic deployment of distributed Web Services.

Document Engineering is a practical exploration of the role documents play in the nexus of contracts that drive modern businesses. The interdisciplinary approach put forward here, taking document engineering out of the realm of pure software engineering, is eye opening and provides some real insight into what it takes to make Service Oriented Architectures work in the real world. This is an absolute must read book for anyone seriously considering developing an XML based document integration strategy.

I was lured by the title and reviews hoping to get insight on how to generically define large documents that could easily be extended as requirements change and consumed by a wide variety of clients using different arbitrary programming languages. I didn't learn anything new about extensibility, and programming languages are absent from this book.

Instead the book seems to be a somewhat dated look at a high level process for using documents in a service oriented architecture. The calendar example application seems too simple to translate into a more complex real life application. The approach described for "document engineering" is much more reminiscent of waterfall style development approaches rather than lean/agile techniques.

I also found the text very difficult to read; it's very dry.

Perhaps this book is useful for some, but it certainly isn't helpful for everybody.

The book received was in mint condition. The shipping was fast. A+ for this seller.

The book is an introduction to health informatics .It is extremely theoritical . Health Information systems has a long way to go , and I am sure this book will be out of date in a short while. The paper quality , and diagrams were not that good for the price I paid .
Asaad

This Book is a Bible in Biomedical Informatics.

I didn't think I'd like this book very much when I found I had to order it for a class I'm taking (Introduction to Medical Informatics). It's fairly dense, but I found that it is dense in a good kind of way. Each chapter reads like a good overview of the subject. As I've progressed through the book I find very little lacking. It offers nearly complete information on every aspect of the subject matter. Someone who didn't know something ever existed before reading this book could come away with a good grasp of the subject and have references to follow up for a more complete view. It doesn't read like literature, but thankfully it is broken up into small easily digestible sections.

There are probably other texts that are easier to read because of style. This one is very strong on content and won't leave gaps. It might have you asking the right kind of question when finished, but that is the whole point, isn't it?

Everyone in the field of medical informatics knows Ed Shortliffe. He has done a lot of pioneering work in the field. However, I think this book was just so-so. It is a brief overview of the field of informatics. I found it difficult to read - nothing in the book "grabs" me.

I wouldn't recommend it, really. It may be worth a look because it is authored by Shortliffe.

If you are a medical informatics professional, you may enjoy reading this book. However, please note that this is not a technical book about medical informatics. This is a book about the why's of the use of computers in medicine and the why's of the failures in the implementation.

The title say it all, it is a review about how computers should be used to empower the users (patients and health care workers).

This book is for medical doctors, nurses, therapists, managers, and engineers working in a health organization. Sometimes the tone is too negative, but I think the goal is to make sure you don't fall in the same traps Mr. Slack has fallen in the past. Also, sometimes it feels too biased toward the doctor and patient, leaving everyone else as evil entities. (But that's my personal feeling, maybe it is not that biased or negative).

Recommended for all health workers (so you get the idea if your IT department is doing its job), for managers (who can check ways to improve the IT services) and for IT workers (who can check if their objectives are not only aligned with the organization's goals, but also to check if you are giving a good service to the final users [the patients]).

Like many if not most of the readers of Cybermedicine, I am not without preconception of Dr Slack and his work in medical computing. He is, I think, a more influential figure in it than an unacquainted reader would gather from his humble self-description. I would have better enjoyed the book had it been more of a history, complete with copious name-dropping, and less a prescription for the future, as Dr Slack's strengths are, I think, more evident in his accomplishments than his speculations. Nonetheless, the principles laid forth in Cybermedicine are sound, proven, and reducible to "the computer is the tool of the user, not vice-versa". The reader should be cautioned not to consider them lightly just because many of them seem obvious or out-of-date. If anything, such guidance is more needed by the technology community now than it was 20 years ago.

Generally a good book, explains a lot about the author's history. Good points about patient empowerment. Very important points about use of e-mail in clinical settings. I'm a little more cynical about the use of direct computer-patient dialog for clinical information (One such system once told me that I was suffering from premenstral tension...it forgot to ask my sex.) Would like to have much greater focus on the future, however...incidents from the 1960's and 1970's are not all that relevant today.

the book is the depiction of one dedicated doctor's experience and efforts with clinical computing. excellant in every way and brings sence to the ojective of computing and a master piece

This is a book I looked forward to with much anticipation upon hearing about it. I am highly interested in the area of medical informatics, and the book gave an excellent summary of Dr. Slack's very interesting, personal experience with the introduction and advancement of computers into the field of medicine. The tone of the writing is not at all dry, and it was a very pleasurable read. I particularly enjoyed the way Dr. Slack emphasized the fact that if a system really WORKS, people will use it. Computer "literacy" and phobia are not issues if the system actually makes work easier. If a system is not adopted, then the user is not to blame, the designer is.

My one criticism of the book is that towards the last third of the book, the author writes a lot about why computers have failed at some institutions. Though my gut feeling is that much of what he writes here is true (and from the clinician's point of view, it may appear this way), this last section of th! e book was entirely too negative, and had the tone of venting anger.

The purpose of this book seems to be education, and this "demonization" of the admin definitely oversimplifies the situation, and does nothing for the reader. He reduces the problem into a lazy, self serving administrator standing in the way of the noble, idealistic clinician and engineer.

It would have been better to examine the facts of this problem a little more closely in order to see how the "self-serving" attitude of administrators might be guided towards implementing good computer systems. As I said before, I share Dr. Slack's personal regard for many administrators, but this extended venting served no purpose.

Though I have the single criticism of it, I still highly recommend the book. Dr. Slack has clearly been a pioneer in this area and has a unique perspective on computers and medicine, which he shares very well.

I ordered this book thinking that it would help me to develop and centralize case management in an insurance company. This book is really for non-medical hospital management personnel. The focus is on hospital case management only, with a side on home health as it relates to the discharged hospital patient. For what it is, I think the price is too high and I returned it.

Cherilyn Murer's "The Case Management Sourcebook: a Guide to Designing and Implementing a Centralized Case Management System," couldn't be more timely or accurate. Case Management has, for years, been either misunderstood or considered an added expense that produces no real value. Murer's straight forward approach on this complicated topic provides the reader with answers to questions that to date have been vague at best. Murer not only educates the reader on the concepts of case management, but provides an organizational structure that is both direct and functional. This is a must book for any executive facing the changes produced by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. This book and others written by Murer continue to demonstrate the quality and professiionalism of one of the "best of the best" in health related consulting. Thanks for the effort Ms. Murer.

According to the subtitle, the audience for this book is librarians and "health care consumers," but according to the introduction, the audience is both of those and "health professionals," as well. Its stated purpose is to introduce readers to where and how to find health information on the Internet, including the Web, newsgroups and related resources.

The editor and nearly all of the chapter authors or co-authors are librarians by profession, most of them affiliated with universities, usually working in medical libraries.

HIGHLIGHTS

The most thorough and useful chapter is the one by helen-ann brown [sic] and Valerie G. Rankow on various free and fee-for-service or pay-per-view gateways to searching the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE archives of medical journal articles. The co-authors include two tables that compare features and advantages of six free services that offer access to MEDLINE, plus info on four fee-based services.

These charts help readers choose which services may be preferable for their particular purposes. When the authors explain how to narrow a search to a specific focus or to stipulate search criteria (such as the prognosis for a disease), they include a sample search that explains their search strategy, lists the key words that strategy translates to in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), and shows one search result as an example. This chapter is far more valuable for the reader's long-term benefit than the many other chapters that suggest starting at megasites or Web search engines, and then repeat the same site info throughout the book.

The chapters on statistical information and medical journals are also good, although some of this information is included in others chapters where the authors didn't stick to their assigned topics. For instance, the chapter on government resources for health information digresses too far into statistical information, especially since that's the topic of the chapter by different authors that follows.

LIMITATIONS

One gets the impression that the authors or co-authors weren't aware of what each chapter in the book would cover, or at least that there wasn't sufficient guidance, oversight or actual editing to prevent the considerable redundancy and poor organization of the information. Lack of developmental editing aside, the book apparently had neither a style guide nor a copy editor, judging by the hodgepodge of headings and subheadings and the difficulty of following the presentation in some of the chapters. Even the Web addresses (URLs) aren't written consistently.

Because of the inconsistencies, redundancies and confusing organization, it becomes too tedious to read the whole book thoroughly, so most readers are likely to end up skimming, thereby perhaps missing useful how-to tips. Keeping the how-to info at the beginning of each chapter, followed by lists of annotated citations that adhere to a consistent format would improve the readability and usefulness of this book.

The hardback version was published in 1999, followed by a paperback in 2000. As nearly every chapter states, information online - what exists and, certainly, where to find it - changes daily. At the least, both editions should have included a CD-ROM with live links to the sites mentioned in each chapter, or else aggregated both by category and alphabetically. Better yet, a companion Web site that is updated at least twice a year, even as a paid-subscription service, would be far more useful than a print-only book that can't help but be outdated before it's even off the press.

The editor and five of the 17 chapter authors or co-authors are librarians in Pennsylvania - five of them, including the author, at Pennsylvania State University; four others among the authors are librarians at the University of Minneapolis; the rest are at the University of Maryland (two), the University of Michigan, the New York City area or in Florida. All have good credentials, but the concentration at certain universities and in limited geographic areas is bothersome.

SUMMARY

Despite the drawbacks of the organization and format, even readers who are familiar with the Web and other Internet resources are likely to discover several Web sites, and services offered through certain sites, that they would not have known about and may never have found without this book. Just a couple of discoveries like that can be worth the price of the book, because they could save time and help in other ways continually thereafter.

This guide for librarians and health care consumers discusses how to locate and search for health care information on the internet. Charts, figures and tables supplement details on specific web sites and their descriptions to help users both locate and evaluate health care sites.

This book is more about how to write Java applications that connect to existing systems (such as BLAST) that Bioinformatics and Biomedical professionals already use, rather than how to write Java versions of those systems, the algorithms used in those systems, or algorithms generally relevant to the mentioned fields. While teaching someone to write Java applications that could send data, request service, and parse then display the results received from the queried systems is useful, such a book probably does not warrant such a high price tag as a book that teaches one how to write Java versions of algorithms useful for the Bioinformatics and Biomedical fields.

Finally, a book that introduces bioinformatics using Java. While Perl is great for pattern matching and basic scripting, it is not at all an ideal choice for complex bioinformatics applications at all levels of complexity. Books like this one help train a new generation of bioinformatics experts with a broad-based training in computing (not just Perl scripting).

As a medic I am, like many of my breed, skeptical when a new "health management" book comes to the fore. It appears that clinical knowledge and management of these concepts is here to stay. I purchased this book in order to gain more of a grounding in the field and can say I was pleasantly surprised by its approach.

Rather than being a prescription to all things clinical, the book is a compilation of clinical knowledge practice from around the world. It claims to be the first book to take the necessary holistic approach for knowledge management from both the IT and clinical perspectives and I can well believe this.

I particularly liked the KM in action section of the book. It is all to easy to pontificate on new theories without providing evidence to support these views. This book has evidence in spades and more than one or two suggestions which I can take forward to my next management meeting.

This compilation of essays focuses on current issues and future speculation on health care informatics. It is a good replacement for the 1992 title "Health and the New Media: Technologies Transforming Personal and Public Health." It is no easy task to intersect 3 vast areas of inquiry: ethics, computing, and medicine and the writers of this volume realize that the future of health professions is computational and that a lack of attention to ethical issues in informatics is no longer adequate and that the issues are larger even than confidentiality, privacy, and legal issues. Medical values and human values can frequently be at odds, and technology has had a major impact on things people value most. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of cybermedicine and each author wrestles with the question "Are there health-related tasks that computers should never be permitted to perform?" Psychiatric judgments are one example of this type of function.

Another important issue discussed is responsibility for computer-based decisions. One author proposes to change the focus of malpractice suits away from machine designers and toward the responsibilty of physicians who defer to machine judgments. Rather than asking who did what, the author asks how to promote certain social goods by choosing between theories of accountability. This book is unusual in that it addresses not just the dilemma of patient/access, but also the dilemma of the health care provider and the institution. It was surprising, however, not to read one mention of HIPAA (Heath Information Privacy and Accountability Act, 1996). It also lacked some of the interesting historical information that provides the backdrop for these vital issues that we continue to struggle with today.

New technologies release a vast amount of information concerning diagnosis and treatment, which leads to physicians responding to clinical uncertainties by shifting responsibility for decisions to patients. While this can be empowering, it can also dump information and responsibility onto confused and frightened people. The chapter on "Health care information: access, confidentiality, and good practice" was excellent, as was the discussion on what being human is good for. "Medicine/nursing is not exclusively and clearly scientific, statistical, or procedural and hence, is not, so far, computationally tractable."

Computers dramatically improve our ability to calculate how things will turn out. They can help inform clinical or scientific decisions; they do not help solve problems related to ethics, values, and policy. This book reminds us that the "confidence that comes from having computers give us answers to scientific questions must be tempered with restraint shaped by those experiences in which we were so enthralled by the medium that we got the wrong message."