Today, the health care industry is responsible for approximately 36% of the world’s data volume—surging at a faster rate than data produced by financial services, manufacturing or media and entertainment. We wear device monitors on our wrists and chests, record physical and emotional inputs on interactive apps and track years of clinical exam information in the electronic health record (EHR). If harnessed properly, this data can provide health care organizations with valuable insights that can help streamline facility operations, reduce errors, make drugs and medical devices safer, and improve the quality of patient care.
This is the objective of health informatics (HI). The growing need to manage this boom in health care data has shed more light on the importance of the health informatics profession and the wide range of roles available within the field.
So, what is health informatics?
Health informatics is an interdisciplinary field that brings together computer science, medicine, health care and data management. Its professionals focus on health data acquisition (such as data from the EHR), ensuring its proper management and representation as they then work in teams or with other professionals to transform this knowledge into actionable health interventions or new health care processes. For example, HI professionals can take years of medical imaging from across populations, and using artificial intelligence, train the computer to analyze the data to look for anomalies that could predict cancer in advance of a physician’s diagnosis.
Why is health informatics important?
With the amount of health care data being generated, and its ever-increasing complexity, it is impossible to analyze this data without the help of new methods and new technologies. Health informatics plays a key role in the development, implementation and evaluation of all this data to help doctors, nurses, specialists, therapists and insurance companies improve their decision making—ultimately providing the best care for patients and clients.
Health informatics takes data and transforms it into knowledge. We are challenged by organizing this data from different structures, sources and formats, yet it is integral to the advancement of medical knowledge. HI professionals build the informatics infrastructure to allow for future development of new treatments, processes and interventions in health care. As University of Pittsburgh Department of Health Information Management Assistant Professor Kim Peterson foretells, “The cure for cancer is in the data.”
What is a health informatics specialist?
These individuals are responsible for reviewing an organization’s operations and implementing computing systems to improve those operations. Their day-to-day responsibilities may include collecting and assessing data, evaluating technology performance, researching options for new technology, installing technology and training health care staff to use technology.
These specialists can work for a wide range of organizations including hospitals, clinics, private practices, medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, insurers and government agencies.
What are the types of health informatics?
The discipline encompasses a wide range of specialties that focus on different areas of health care and medical research. Among these are:
- Clinical informatics: Also called applied clinical informatics or operational informatics, this sub-discipline focuses on the use of information technology for the delivery of health care services.
- Biomedical informatics: This sub-discipline deals with the applications of information technology in cellular and molecular biology, including genomics and medicinal chemistry.
- Public health informatics: This area of informatics focuses on the use of data analysis and information technology to improve public health practice, research and learning.
- Pharmacy informatics: This sub-discipline deals with the use of data science in the discovery and development of pharmaceutical drugs, as well as new techniques for administering drugs.
- Consumer health informatics: This sub-discipline deals with the use of data analysis and IT for enhancing patient experience and integrating user preferences into health information systems.
What jobs are available in health informatics?
Read more about jobs in HI from our brief career guide! Check out the Bachelor of Science and Master of Science Health Informatics programs’ Outcomes pages to learn more about careers and job roles at each academic level.
- Visit the Outcomes page for the BS in Health Informatics program
- Visit the Outcomes page for the MS in Health Informatics program
Earning a degree in HI is the best way to take advantage of the explosive growth in this field. Plan to apply for either HI program at Pitt, and it won’t be long before you have the knowledge needed to advance in medical information leadership and technology.