The course provides a practical introduction to computer applications in health. The course includes material from various health informatics projects in Australia. Topics include: general practice computing, hospital outpatient information systems, departmental and ancillary systems, nursing information systems; electronic prescribing, data entry issues with data archiving, medical languages and terminology. The course will introduce examples of electronic medical record systems, both clinical and operational decision support systems (DSS), and information retrieval systems. The importance of standards in enabling the wide-scale implementation of systems will be introduced including messaging and data interchange standards, terminology and coding standards. The course also explores barriers to system implementation including a discussion of diffusion of innovations and socio-cultural aspects of technology adoption as well as the long-term impact of information technology on society.