Advances in education and consumer health informatics. Findings from the Section on Education and Consumer Informatics.

OBJECTIVES: To summarize current excellent research in the field of education and consumer health informatics.

METHOD: Synopsis of the articles on education and consumer health informatics selected for the IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics 2007.

RESULTS: The consumer health informatics papers selected reflect the growing importance of communication and information retrieval systems in health care both for patients and professionals. Sound exemplary studies point out both the benefit for patients as well as the economic advantages of such systems. On the education sector, an intelligent tutoring system for medical students based on natural language dialogue serves as an example for the advancement and refinement of methods.

CONCLUSION: The selected articles demonstrate the potential of advanced communication and information systems in health care. The physician-patient relationship though must not be affected by the introduction of these systems in order to ensure acceptance by both patients and physicians. Therefore these tools should be used in addition to current processes, and not as a replacement.