The field of Health Informatics

The field of Health Informatics

Health Informatics is catching up as a field of health and Information Technology. At its barest, it can be understood as being the area that concerns the use of IT in health. However, Health Informatics goes beyond being just this. It consists of the entire IT ecosystem in the healthcare industry, which means that individual healthcare units use IT via a connected system that helps them to coordinate health information via the Net. The wider aim of Health Informatics is to improve healthcare quality and efficiency with the use of IT.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCs) offers a more comprehensive understanding of Health Informatics, defining it as the complete science that concerns the entire why and how of health IT. Since Health Informatics is essentially about using IT for the accomplishment of several healthcare-related goals and aims; it is fast evolving into a specialized area of its own, having its own set of concepts, areas of study, theories and practical applications. Health Informatics involves using these in real life situations for achieving better health outcomes.

International standards for Health Informatics

Health Informatics is governed by a few international standards. Provisions of ISO 27799:2008, which is part of ICS 35.240.80, is the guiding international standard for this area.

Related subdomains

Health Informatics consists of many interrelated subdomains. These include clinical informatics, pharmacy informatics, nursing informatics, pathology informatics, and many others.

Reason for the evolution of Health Informatics

Health Informatics evolved rapidly as a result of the breakneck speed at which the concept of Electronic Health Records (EHR) caught the healthcare sector's imagination. Its growth has been synonymous with that of this idea of health IT. As result of the high pace at which healthcare providers adapt EHRs; various concepts relating to healthcare, such as meaningful use have come to become part of the Health Informatics vocabulary.

Growth prospects for Health Informatics

An indicator of the alacrity with which Health Informatics is progressing is the assessment by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), according to which. jobs in the Health Informatics sector will expand by a whopping 22 % till at least 2022, which is much higher than that of any other sector. This assessment is corroborated by a study done by careerbuilder.com, which gives Health Informatics the highest ranking for job opportunities in any growing industry.