This book provides a detailed guide to the highly specialised but little known health information workforce - people who are health informaticians, digital health experts, and managers of health data, health information and health knowledge. It explains the basis of their unique functions within healthcare - their educational pathways and standards, professional qualifications and industry certifications, scholarly foundations and principles of good practice. It explores their challenges, including the rise of the health consumer movement, the drive to improve equity and quality in healthcare, new technologies such as artificial intelligence, and the COVID-19 infodemic. Case studies describe how practitioners in real-world roles around the world are addressing the digital transformation of health.

The Health Information Workforce: Current and Future Developments offers insights into a skilled group of people who are essential for healthcare services to function, for care providers to practice at the top of their scope, for researchers to generate significant insights, and for care consumers to be empowered participants in health systems. This book offers new perspectives for anyone working or intending to work in the health sector. It is a critical resource for health workforce planners, employers and educators seeking guidance on the specialised capabilities needed for high performance in an increasingly information-intensive sector.

Autorentext

Kerryn Butler-Henderson, PhD, is Professor of Digital Health, and Director of the Digital Health Hub at RMIT University. She is known for her dedication to the promotion and advocacy of the specialist digital health workforce. Kerryn's internationally recognised leadership has shaped digital health capabilities, pedagogy, and innovation across the health and care economy.

Karen Day, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in health informatics at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is passionate about research on, and delivery of, health informatics education to develop the health information workforce that healthcare services need. She is also interested in patient-facing health technologies for people using digital media for self-care of long-term health issues, e.g. patient portals, social media, and apps.

Kathleen Gray, PhD is Professor of Health Informatics at the University of Melbourne. Through her research, teaching and community engagement she works to broaden and deepen critical understanding of the ways that digital health is changing the roles and responsibilities of patients, clinicians, health service managers and health information specialists.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Book framework.- Identity.- Health information work and workers- a systematic literature review over the past 5 decades.- No home in global occupation lists.- Competency standards and accreditation.- Potatoes or potahtoes: what's in a name?.- Who is your tribe?.- Remaining current and relevant in a changing landscape.- Microcredentials - fashion, fad or the real deal?.- Health information workers as health.- Impact.- The impact of specialised health information work on health systems performance professionals and as IT professionals.- The socio-technical foundations of health information work.- Evidence-based practice in this workforce.- Practice- based evidence in this workforce.- Case studies of impact on access and equity.- Case studies of impact on safety and quality.- Case studies of impact on efficiency and sustainability.- Innovation.- Globalisation and outsourcing of health information work.- Educating every health professional to be an information professional.- Reinventing health information work in response to AI in healthcare.- Consumer health literacy and digital patients - the role of the health information workforce.- Identity.- Case study: working as a clinical health information specialist - medical.- Case study: working as a clinical health information specialist - nursing.- Case study: working as a clinical health information specialist - allied health.- Case study: working as a health information management specialist.- Case study: working as a health librarian specialist.- Case study: working as a health data scientist specialist.- Case study: working as a public health information specialist.- Case study: working as a health research information specialist.- Case study: working as a health cyber security specialist.- Case study: working as a health CIO specialist.