What is Healthcare Informatics?

Healthcare informatics influences healthcare delivery, management, and planning, with the goal of improving clinical outcomes, lowering the cost of care, and bettering the patient and provider experience. It is the interdisciplinary study of the design, development, and application of technology-based healthcare innovations.

Health informatics is known by several different names. The field is also popularly referred to as clinical informatics, biomedical informatics, health IT, data science, health informatics, medical informatics, and nursing informatics, among others.

Bridging the gap between data science and patient care, health informatics is a field that ties together multiple disciplines including; information science, computer science, social science, behavioral science, and managerial science to improve healthcare outcomes.

The benefits of healthcare informatics

Covering health data collection, storage, reporting, and communication, health informatics maintains a mission to advance operational efficiencies to streamline comprehensive care and protect patient data. As an industry, healthcare informatics connects people with health technology to better improve healthcare outcomes and safety.

As developments to those processes are continually made through design, implementation, and configuration, the career opportunities in healthcare informatics are growing quickly.

How is informatics used in healthcare?

Informatics is an important tool in patient advocacy and helps patients to provide their clinician, or team of healthcare providers, with critical and timely information to achieve higher quality care.

Informatics can also facilitate the secure sharing of information with family, friends, and other patients, allowing patients to take control of their own care by accessing electronic medical records or using a secure system where they can communicate with their doctors and nurses.

Healthcare informatics careers are on the rise

As a society, we are relying more and more on information technology and data, which is creating new education and career paths in Healthcare Informatics all the time.

Healthcare roles and occupations are expected to expand faster than any other industry. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates a 20% career growth for professionals specializing in health informatics –providing stable opportunities and promise for a valuable career.

5 HEALTHCARE INFORMATICS JOBS ON THE RISE

What are examples of informatics in healthcare?

Healthcare informatics – the intersection of people, technology, and data – can be found in many forms.

A few examples include patient portals, electronic medical records (EMRs), telehealth, healthcare apps, and a variety of data reporting tools including health data analytics and predictive models.

What is the role of informatics in the healthcare industry?

Health Informatics professionals capture, communicate and use data and clinical knowledge to support healthcare professionals and informatics in healthcare. They make sure staff can use the latest technology so they can better deliver patient care – and they collate, store and retrieve records used in the diagnosis and treatment of patients.

Specialists in the Health Informatics field deal with the resources, devices, and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval, interpretation, and use of information in health and biomedicine.

More resources about Health Informatics: https://online.une.edu/blog/category/blog/online-learning/health-informatics/

How can informatics improve the quality of patient care?

Health informatics plays a critical role in the push toward healthcare reform by leveraging the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of healthcare information. Informatics creates a way for hospitals, clinics, provider’s offices, and other facilities to deliver data-driven and patient-centered care.

This optimization of the life cycle of data helps foster better collaboration among a patient’s various healthcare providers.

Is a health informatics certificate worth it?

Graduates with a Master’s in Health Informatics make on average $20,000 more per year than professionals with just a four-year degree – and Health Informatics is a stable field experiencing continuous growth.

Learn more with our free program guide