5 Important Health Informatics Facts
- Excellent Wage Potential
- Excellent Job Growth
- Multi-Faceted Field
- Helps Reduce Costs
- Requires Education
Health informatics is a field that deals with the collection, acquisition, retrieval, storage and use of healthcare information to improve the safety and quality of healthcare provided to patients. Health informatics, probably more than anything else, is responsible for the type of healthcare patients receive. While health informatics may use health information technology, the two are not the same because health informatics focuses on the how and why behind information technology.
1. Excellent Wage Potential
Health informatics is a field that not only offers various jobs but also excellent wage potentials as well. According to the Health Care Information and Management Systems Society, the average salary for someone in health information technology is about $110,000. For instance, a nurse informatics specialist may earn $66,000, and a nurse informatics director may earn $140,000 annually. Obviously, one factor that can affect the wages is the specific position.
2. Excellent Job Growth
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts that there should be about 2.4 million new healthcare jobs added between 2016 and 2026, which is a growth of about 18 percent. The BLS reported that jobs in health informatics alone would grow at a rate of up to 21 percent. Health informatics is a vast field, that offers career opportunities in many areas of the medical industry. It not only will add many more jobs but various specialties as well. Some job possibilities include medical records and health information technician; clinical informatics director; nurse informaticist; health IT consultant; chief medical information officer; clinical data analyst; health informatics consultant; and electronic medical record keeper.
3. Multi-Faceted Field
Health informatics is not just one field. It’s a field that offers three disciplines: technology, healthcare and business. An individual can choose a career in any one of these three areas and find many jobs. In addition to the disciplines, health informatics also offers sub-categories, such as nursing informatics, public health informatics, bioinformatics, and health information management, among others.
4. Helps reduce costs
The main purpose of health informatics is to provide the best possible healthcare to patients and to provide them with safe and high-quality care at an affordable cost. Health informatics can help the medical industry reduce costs, which will result in more efficient health care. A large percentage of health care dollars today is wasted on inefficient processes. Health informatics within a healthcare facility allows the system to run smoother, which ultimately results in lower costs. Lower costs for the facility equate to lower costs and better care for the patients.
5. Requires education
Careers in health informatics require more than just the desire to work in healthcare and a skill with computers. The individual who chooses a career in health informatics needs training and usually a college degree. Depending on the position, the individual may need licensing and certification as well as education, training and work experience. Students interested in health informatics have various degrees from which to choose, which all lead to different occupations. They can also choose from jobs in technology, healthcare, business or something in the middle.
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Health informatics is vital to our healthcare industry because it’s only as good as the health informatics it provides. Individuals who are interested in a career with healthcare but don’t wish to have direct patient contact often find health informatics as an ideal career choice because it still allows them to play a role in healthcare reform.