In healthcare, informatics means not only safely and efficiently maintaining patient information, but using computer science to facilitate research and analysis. And given the amount and scope of healthcare information that needs to be kept, that means jobs.
Future demand
"The number of jobs for people with informatics as a specialty ranges from 10,000 to 40,000 in the next 20 years, in every kind of healthcare setting," says Bonnie Westra, PhD, RN, assistant professor and co-director of the International Council on Nursing Practice Center at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing.
Positions include project leaders, educators, researchers and system designers, particularly people who can help with what Westra calls "interoperability."
"That is the ability to send information from one system to another and have it mean the same thing from the sender to the receiver," such as from hospital to clinic or across hospital departments, Westra says.
State law requires informatics compliance
Minnesota healthcare providers have been converting to electronic health records for years. By 2015, they must be able to use those records interoperably, exchanging data with other systems, according to state law.
Nurses are heavily involved in the development and implementation of healthcare informatics, according to Mary Kujawa, BSN RN, a charter board member of the Minnesota Nursing Informatics Group and a manager of Fairview Health Systems' acute electronic health record. "The ultimate goal is to improve patient outcome," Kujawa says.
