Career Opportunities for Informaticians

From your thoughtful review of this session's readings, select two areas of health informatics in practice to describe.  What types of career opportunities do you see for these areas?

            Healthcare Informatics as a whole is one of the fastest growing areas in healthcare. The impact informatics has is profound and can be seen amongst various healthcare settings to include public health agencies, hospitals, insurance companies, health consulting firms, and amongst many others. My focus would primarily be the impact informatics will have on public health settings and healthcare settings to include hospitals and clinics. Within these two settings the specific careers opportunities will be Data Scientists and Medical and Health Services Managers (Evans, 2014).

            With regards to Data Scientist, this specialty is a multi-disciplinary field that leverages different computational methods to analyze, extract, and provide insights from disparate data sources (Garmire et al, 2017). Over the next few years this occupation that I identified under computer and information research scientist is expected to grow 19 percent almost as fast as the other opportunistic area I have identified between 2016 to 2026. Additionally, this group of highly skilled individuals will have a vast skillset that can prepare them for opportunities in public health agencies and other critical positions in hospital systems. In 2016 there where 27,900 jobs accounted for with 28 percent of these roles in federal government positions and 20 percent in computer design and related fields (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018). With regards to public health there will always be a need for research. The Data Scientist career will thrive in this industry due to the high demand for improvements in population health and need for highly skilled individuals who can make sense of disparate data.

            Medical and Health Services Managers is an area that informaticians with specials skills in managing and coordinating medical services can prosper. With a growing trend in leveraging technology in a healthcare setting. Informatics professionals offer a specific knowledge base skill set to leverage and understand technology to improve workflows, develop departmental goals, and improve delivery of care amongst improving other efficiencies in a healthcare setting. With regards to future growth, the career outlook for this role and potential growth is 20 percent from 2016 to 2026. In 2016 alone there where 352,200 positions filled in this category with 36 percent being positions held in a hospital setting (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018). Overall this reflects a positive outlook for professionals pursuing a graduate degree in this field of study. Moreover, compared to its counterparts or similar positions this career area of opportunity is growing at a much faster rate.

            Public Health and Hospital systems will consistently be in need of informaticians. The healthcare industry as a whole is expected to grow by 18 percent from 2016 to 2026 (Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 2018). This growth would essentially have an impact on the need for individuals with specialized skills in bridging the gap of healthcare and information technology. Although the focus of health informatics is not primarily on technology. A lot of our training consists of understanding and being able to provide insightful interpretations on information. A major part of this is understanding the basics of how to query databases using data using mining tools such as SQL and statistical tools such as R programming. Therefore, further supporting the shift towards a need for individuals with an informatics background. With regards to health informatics I asses that there will only be additional room for growth.

References:

Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2018). Computer and Information Research Scientists. Retrieved from: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-and-information-research-scientists.htm

Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2018). Healthcare Occupations. Retrieved from: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/home.htm

Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2018). Medical and Health Services Managers. Retrieved from: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/medical-and-health-services-managers.htm

Evans, R. (2014). Expert Review on the Current Trends of “Health and Medical Informatics”. Journal of Health & Medical Informatics. doi: 10.4172/2157-7420.1000e131

Garmire, L., Gliske, S., Nguyen, Q., Chen, J., Nemati, S., Van Horn, J., . . Dunn, M. (2017). The Training of Next Generation Data Scientists in Biomedicine. PMC, 22, 640-645. doi: 10.1142/9789813207813_0059