Guide to medical informatics, the internet and telemedicine Enrico Coiera Guide to Medical Informatics, The Internet and Telemedicine Chapman & Hall 376pp £29.99 0-412-75710-9 0412757109 [Formula: see text].

Very lucid, written in straightforward language and easily understood by a nontechnical person, this excellent introduction to informatics covers a wide range of material, all of which is relevant to nurses. It opens with chapters on models, information and systems, thus making it clear that computing per se is not what informatics is about fundamentally. Paper information systems, the telephone and other conventional information systems are discussed and compared with computer systems. Intranet systems and security are covered without specifically referring to the NHSNet, thus avoiding parochialism. Other topics include systems specific to health care, coding, tire Internet and clinical decision systems.