History

The Division of Biomedical Informatics (formerly the Division of Medical Informatics Research, originally the Section of Medical Information Resources) within the department of Health Sciences Research was created in 1987 to formalize the organization of medical record indexing operations (previously the Medical Records Unit) and to initiate a new program of research on patient data representation in a knowledge-based context.

The roots of the division date to the turn of the century with the introduction of the unit medical record in 1907 and the establishment in 1909 of two sophisticated biaxial coding systems implemented on 5 x 7 index cards to catalog all medical diagnoses listed on the summary "master sheet" and all surgical procedures. This system was re-engineered in 1935 to exploit the emerging IBM punch card technology and was computerized in 1975. Diagnoses from 1950 onward are now on computer tape or disk, but the earlier data remain intact for manual retrieval.

Together, this system provides access to the diagnoses and surgical procedures recorded among all inpatients and outpatients seen at Mayo Clinic since 1909. In 2001, 3.4 million diagnoses were entered for 412,000 patients, and 225,000 surgical procedure codes were entered. To date approximately 13 million clinical notes have been indexed.