JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Primary care informatics professionals address workflow and technology solutions in a wide spectrum of health, ranging from optimizing the experience of the individual patient in the clinic room to supporting the health of populations. Primary care informatics overlaps uniquely with two key disciplines with immense impact on societal health - primary care and health informatics. Primary care is often a hub or gateway to accessing healthcare, and has a primary aim of synthesizing and coordinating numerous and potentially complex elements of patients’ health and medical care in a holistic manner. However, over the past 25 years, primary care has become a specialty in crisis: in a post-COVID world, worsening workforce shortages, clinician burnout, and continuing challenges in healthcare access all contribute to difficulties in sustaining primary care. informatics professionals are poised to change this trajectory. In this viewpoint, we aim to inform readers of the discipline of primary care informatics and its importance in the design, support, and maintenance of essential primary care services. Although the focus of this work is on primary care in the United States, which includes general internal medicine, family medicine, and pediatrics, many of the principles outlined can also be applied to comparable healthcare services and settings in other countries. We highlight the challenges in primary care and how primary care informatics professionals can address these challenges. We discuss current and emerging technologies in primary care informatics. In summary, primary care informatics offers important contributions to healthcare and to the informatics field, and there are many opportunities for informatics professionals to enhance the primary care experience for patients, families, and their care teams.