Capella University defines health informatics as “driving changes in health care, through the use of data, that will ultimately lead to improved patient care, improved population health, and lower costs.”
Health informatics is a career path that’s going through astronomical growth, with demand far exceeding supply.
Government Mandates Drive Growth
There are numerous reasons for this growth, including the rapid rise of health care technology itself. However, the primary factor is government mandates. First came 2009’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), part of which is the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH). HITECH allocated billions of dollars towards the construction of complementary information systems. Next, 2010’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) built on HITECH’s foundation and reinforced the idea of health care IT as a critical component of patient care.
“The ACA added requirements for health care providers to implement a more effective and efficient system,” says Capella faculty member Christopher Miller, PhD. “Health care has been behind the times in adopting EHR [Electronic Health Records] and IT overall than other industries.” He notes that the lagging in EHR adoption has led to numerous errors, privacy, and security issues.
Capella adjunct faculty Doug Bird, PhD, agrees. “Health care—the way we treat illness—has improved over 200 years. But the way we’ve documented things in health care has basically stayed the same for 200 years. We’ve used paper and writing implements since the days of Florence Nightingale.” The change from paper to digital technology has been a major revolution in health care. “There were some very visionary, very progressive hospitals in the 90s that saw the advantages of taking the paper documents and computerizing them,” Bird says. “They saw it as advantageous—fewer errors, more efficiency.”
But once HITECH/ACA mandated all health care groups that wanted to continue working with Medicare needed to adapt a technological foundation, the demand for informatics specialists rose exponentially, especially for those with backgrounds in hands-on health care. “It’s not just an IT issue,” says Bird. “Organizations that approach it that way are not going to be successful.”
Clinical Backgrounds Wanted
There are two distinct forms of health informatics: nursing and administration. Nurse informaticists have a clinical background and, as Bird notes, speak the medical/clinical health care language. They understand clinical workflow—what happens from the time the patients arrive until they leave. Because they have that clinical background, they’re much better prepared to develop efficient workflow and see gaps or needs in the health care delivery system.
Health administration informaticists have a higher level function. They need to learn how EHR systems will impact organizational, operational, and staffing needs.
Both nursing and health care administration informaticists need to work with integrating the ICD-10 (the World Health Organization’s medical classification list, including codes for diseases, diagnoses, complications, etc.) into their systems, and what’s more, making their internal systems work with those of other health care systems. This interoperability is a key component of the ACA requirements. It will allow clinicians to more easily receive and send patient information to other clinicians, providing patients with better access to care and greater safety and efficacy.
Both Bird and Miller emphasize that this is not strictly an IT function. “IT is struggling to keep up with all this stuff,” says Miller. “They’re already at full capacity with their regular IT functions.” They also aren’t specialists in health care. “Specialization will be key,” says Miller. “Organizations are looking for informaticists who have training in these kinds of systems, but who also have experience in nursing and health care administration.”
An Escalating Career Path
At this point, demand greatly surpasses supply. The potential for qualified health care informaticists is almost unlimited. Bird and Miller see this new specialization as a significant growth area, and one that will continue to see demand as technology changes rapidly. It’s a great opportunity for people in the health care field to build on their existing knowledge in a new way, or to develop a new career path that’s rooted in their previous experience.
Explore Capella’s master’s-level and certificate programs in health care informatics and nursing informatics:
![NursingHealthCareInformatics_CTA[1]](../wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2015/10/NursingHealthCareInformatics_CTA1.jpg)
This is the first post in a three-part series on the growing field of health informatics.
Post Two: The Difference Between Health Care and Nursing Informatics
Post Three: Does Meaningful Use Equal Job Security for Health Professionals?
