One reason why I became a nurse is I love helping people. Whether it’s with the small stuff like helping people get out of bed or educating them about their disease. Being in the health informatics field, I help people in many other ways now, whether its helping them with the actual work or helping them with their career or helping people break into the field. I have been receiving many emails about how to break into the field. But, I want to address the possiblities of jobs out there. A “typical” health informatics position does not exist. In fact, there are a myriad of positions available in health informatics.
1.) Superuser – Serves as a local resource person and has advance knowledge than the average end user 2.) Clinicial Liason – clinicians who represent the interest and needs of other clinicians and communicates issues with the technology team during system design or implementation 3.) Help desk personnel – first line of user support within an organization; these individuals require excellent communication skills and technical knowledge in order to troubleshoot end user problems and issues 4.) PC specialist – provides information and training on commonly used productivity software and helps users with new equipment. These specialists have technical training or a baccalaureate degree in computer science or related area 5.) Clinical Information Analyst – supports process improvement, safety projects, quality initiatives that previously relied on time and labor intensive manual paper chart audits. The Clinical information analyst can work on a organization’s patient satisfaction surveys, wait times for treatment, medication use, and adverse events. This role usually requires a clinical background and is supports evidence-based practice. 6.) Programmer – writes programming codes or instructions that tells a computer what to do. Most programmers do not have a clinical background and often needs a clinical liason to interpret the needs of the clinician. 7.) Information sytems manager/supervisor – size and complexity of an information technology department requires a coordinated effort of a team leader or manager. Since each professional on the team comes with different skill sets and talents, team lead manages each individual. 8.) Network Administrator – responsible for planning, managing, and expansion of networks. 9.) Trainer – responsible for educating clinical users and non-clinical personnal to use the electronic medical record. Some trainers may not have a clinical background but is not necessary. 10.) Security Officer – reponsible for ensuring measures exist to protect information privacy 11.) Chief Information Officer – have a broad view of the needs of the institiution and the design, implementation, and evaluation
of information systems. Responsiblities include strategic planning, policy development, budgeting, information security, recruitment and retention of information management staff, and overall management of the enterprise’s information systems. 12.) Chief Privacy Officer – protects personal health information of patients, both paper and electronic, this position is required by the federal government 13.) Chief E-health officer – this role was created as a part of a strategy for expanding the use of the Internet beyond Informational Web sites to encompass a range of new services electronically 14.) Compliance Officer – designated to ensure federal and state regulations and accrediting requirements are met both via paper and automated records and systems 15.) Project Manager – manages the scope and timeline of a project, may or may not be a clinician 16.) Interface Engineer – ensures information is exhanged between disparate systems and isolates and corrects problems behind the scenes to the users of the system DISCLAIMER: This list is not an inclusive list.
