As someone who has been teaching health informatics
students for a number of years, it is rewarding to find
this discipline finally receiving the attention and
interest it demands. Most health experts have agreed for
some time that the two academic disciplines of informatics
and genomics are the key disciplines that will shape the
future of American healthcare by enabling doctors to have
access to personalized healthcare information at the point
of care.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes
specific wording supporting increased funding of health
informatics programs around the nation. A recent article in
the New York Times has noted that there is a greatly
increased demand for "health informatics specialists" who
have expertise in medical records, insurance claims,
clinical care and computer programming as health care
providers look to utilize the $19 billion in stimulus
funding directed at implementing and expanding electronic
health records.
Health informatics specialists usually start their career
or education in computer programming or as health care
professionals, and later earn a degree in health
informatics and take midlevel or senior jobs at a hospital,
doctor's office, insurance company, drug firm or other
organization working with health care data. The experience
of the UC Davis Health Informatics program, which I direct,
is that most of our graduates have found senior positions
in health informatics in both public and private sectors,
including a number who have become faculty in health
informatics programs, and are now teaching future
generations of students.
William Hersh MD, Chair of the Department of Medical
Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health and
Science University was quoted in the New York Times as
saying , "The health IT people run the servers and install
software, but the informatics people are the leaders, who
interpret and analyze information and work with the
clinical staff." It is crucial to have highly trained
experts in informatics who are able to work across both the
disciplines of health and information technology, and who
understand and are expert in both. Without these
informatics experts it is hard to see how the Obama
Administration policies for Health Information Technology
can possibly be implemented.
The American Medical Informatics Association is the main
professional body relating to health informatics experts
and Don Detmer MD, the Chief Executive Officer, said, "My
rough estimate is that we need about 70,000 health
informaticists" to meet Electronic Health Record goals laid
out in the stimulus bill. Prior to the stimulus bill, most
experts agreed that just to keep progressing with Health IT
implementation at our current relatively slow rate, it
would be necessary to have another 10,000 health
informaticists by 2012. All that is now changed, and there
is an urgent need for many more highly trained health
informatics specialists, and programs such as UC Davis are
planning to more than double their current output of
students within the next three years, assuming extra
stimulus funding.
It is interesting how the public has caught on to the need
for increased numbers of health informatics specialists.
This is demonstrated by the already dramatically increased
numbers of applicants to the UC Davis program, where we are
currently working with more than 50 applicants to our
Masters program, having recently also enrolled 30 students
in the first quarter of our new Certificate program.
It is crucial that the health workforce is retrained for
21st Century medical needs, and with health being one of
the relatively few expanding sectors of the workforce,
training in disciplines such as health informatics is
essential if we are to improve the way health services are
delivered to the nation. We have to be realistic about the
fact that there will be increased needs in future as the
current 46 million uninsured are likely to be covered by
some form of universal insurance and offered more
comprehensive care than they have been able to receive in
the past. This can only happen if we use Health Information
Technology intelligently, and universally, and for that to
happen we have to dramatically increase the number of
health informatics experts around the country.
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This article is based on excerpts from "Your Health in the
Information Age - how you and your doctor can use the
Internet to work together" by Peter Yellowlees MD.
Available at http://www.InformationAgeHealth.com and most
online bookstores. An eBook version, for download to
iPhones and mobile devices called "4 simple steps to better
health - an insiders look" is available at Smashwords at
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1271
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