If you look across most hospital IT departments, you will typically see professionals who have transitioned into healthcare IT from other areas. In some institutions, the majority of these personnel will be individuals that have a healthcare background along with some type of clinical experience.
This could include physicians, nurses, pharmacists, technologists, therapists, etc. Besides the clinical backgrounds, what’s common among this group is that HIT is likely a ‘second career’ for them.
As an academic discipline HIT, or informatics, is still relatively new and not commonplace at universities across the country. The majority of existing programs are post-graduate or master’s level study.
A growing number of new programs at the baccalaureate level study have begun to appear, however (e.g., St. Johns University, Champlain College, Simmons College, Marymount University, and Oregon Institute of Technology). The emergence of bachelor level programs is an innovative change to the way that we educate HIT professionals.
When I first heard about health informatics education occurring during the undergraduate years, I was quite surprised. This made me think further about this new approach. After additional reflection, it made a lot of sense as a trend the industry needs to move toward. As an industry, HIT should be getting new (mostly young) graduates ready to go to work.
Bonnie MacKellar, Ph.D., of the Department of Computer Science, Mathematics and Science at St. Johns University helped launch, and now teaches in, a new Bachelor of Science program in healthcare informatics. “Having a healthcare informatics bachelor’s program is very unusual,” notes Dr. MacKellar. “Most programs are either at the associate’s level or master’s level.” This new program combines components from a number of key academic areas including Computer Science fundamentals; Healthcare Informatics; Health Services Administration and University Core & elective coursework. The curriculum has been designed to “teach students to apply specialized information technology tools within the healthcare delivery process”.
Virtually anyone involved in HIT can agree that healthcare is behind other industries in the use of technology and that there will be plenty of work well into the future. Having graduates of this new, undergraduate-focused approach to education will ensure a steady stream of individuals prepared to step into systems analyst roles.
Stephen Burrows, DPM, MBA, is Chair & Program Director of Healthcare Information Systems at Sacred Heart University’s College of Health Professions.
