Introductory Paper: Bridging the Gap in Medical Informatics and Health Services Research: An Introduction

there has been far too little productive research collaboration between the fields of informatics and health services research. Gaps in coordination among informaticians and health services researchers are particularly ironic in that the opportunities for productive collaboration have never been greater. Many integrated delivery systems and insurers now have access to databases that combine clinical and claims data and are applicable to a wide range of research questions. Many new information technologies and systems are being applied in the health arena. Yet there is a dearth of the expertise required to exploit the research potential of the databases or to undertake credible evaluations of the impact of the new technologies and systems. Quality (AHRQ) cosponsored a training workshop with the title " Medical Informatics and Health Services Research: Bridging the Gap. " The workshop focused on the need to increase the pool of investigators trained and motivated to work on the challenging research issues that lie at the intersection of medical informatics and health services research.* Workshop participants, who were primarily program directors and faculty at NLM-and AHRQ-funded pre-and postdoctoral training programs † for infor-matics or health services research, met at the NLM for * In this introduction and its companion papers, the term health services research refers to several disciplines: health services research, clinical research, epidemiology and public health research. See Mandl and Lee 1 for detailed definitions of each. † Information on AHRQ-funded programs may be found at