Information technology has been receiving increasing attention in the field of medical care and health service. Training professionals in health information technology and conducting scientific researches will benefit the development of the medical and health services and national strategy Healthy China.  Health informatics is a discipline with respect to information processing and exchanging in medical practice, education and scientific research. It is a new cross-discipline involving medicine, computer science, artificial intelligence, decision making, statistics, health care and information management. Systematic and in-depth cross-discipline research in this field will play an important role in public health, hospital management, health management, disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment, become a new growth aspect of the discipline, and finally drive the innovation of the whole medical community.

Against such a backdrop, the department of health informatics was established by the school of public health in December 2017 on the basis of thorough investigation of the development of public health and preventive medicine and demands of talent training, aiming to play a leading role in teaching and research, talent training and social services in the field, and advancing the of the connotation of the discipline.