What Is a Health Informatics and How to Become One

By ZipRecruiter Marketplace Research Team

The different types of health informatics careers include informatics analysts, nutrition and pharmacy informatics specialists, clinical informaticists, and informatics managers. The specific duties of each of these careers vary slightly, but many of the responsibilities are similar. Some of your responsibilities in these careers are to monitor patient data and analyze it to provide more accurate patient histories and information about their medications to clinical care professionals and help develop new systems of data organization and storage. This helps clinicians and other end users access patient records and data more quickly.

Health informatics jobs are in high demand at present. It is a relatively new field that has benefitted from healthcare companies and medical care facilities, such as doctor’s offices, pharmacies, and hospitals, transitioning to electronic record keeping. The growth is also due to federal guidelines and mandates requiring digital patient records. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 13% growth in the field in the coming decade. Those with advanced skills in IT and data management, as well as a health or medical background, should have good opportunities.

The qualifications needed to get a job in health informatics differ depending on the specific position in which you are interested. Nurse informaticists, who are liaisons between informatics and database developers, need to have an associate or bachelor’s degree in nursing. You must also be a registered nurse in this career. To become an informatics specialist, you need to have a background in IT, such as a bachelor’s degree in IT or computer science. Pharmacy informaticists may need to have additional training in pharmacy practices on top of their IT background. All informaticists need to have a firm grasp of medical terminology and electronic health records systems.