For 2009 Medical Informatics Insights, an open access journal published by Libertas Academica, will be renamed Biomedical Informatics Insights. The Editor in Chief, Dr John Pestian, writes:

Historically, there have been multiple groups devoted to the science of informatics: biological and medical. The biological group, known as bioinformatics, is interested in the computational needs posed by biological data. Such examples are: analysis of microarray data, analysis of proteomic data, and analysis of metobolomic data.

On the other hand, the medical informatics group has been concerned with the computational needs posed by clinical delivery and medical care data. Such examples are: drug selection based on pharmacogenetics, analysis of suicidal patients speech using natural language processing methods, and automated update of complex data using artificial experts.

Because of this shift, we propose changing the name of Medical Informatics Insights to Biomedical Informatics Insights. This is an ideal time to make this change because the journal is not yet indexed, nor widely accessed.

Additionally, the name change will appeal to a larger group of scientists who are studying biomedical informatics issues.