Heatlhcare Informatics: Education is the Key to Competitiveness in the 21st Century

A colleague in the Healthcare Information Systems posted at Health Informatics Forum the 'Challenges in implementation of HIS'

Several professionals provided and shared their inputs.

Juntee Terrenal, MA, GMS participated in the forum and his thoughts were captured below;

"Reply by Juntee Terrenal MA GMS on July 11, 2009:
Great information about the challenges .. however, that is only the tip of the ice berg. It's not only in India that have these challenges but it is true globally.

In my perspectives, the real challenge that you might like to look at is by educating hospital management executives about the advantages of HIS. Majority of them are medical professionals and did not go to school about information technology. It is not in their line of lingo. Those that have taken personal initiatives to learn the complexity of technology can understand the "Geeky talk".

What I have noticed is that IT professionals outside hospital system who wanted to be withn the HIS tend to push immediately their technical expertise to the medical professionals and hospital administrators ..

If you take your approach strategically by influencing and educating those that make decisions through learning process and clear explanation about the advantages and efficiency .. not a 'geek speak' - most likely, they will adapt to the concepts of higher budget allocation and full computerization and technical integration into the hospital system.

Nursing and Pharmacy Informatics professionals who had hands-on patient care experience and have become technologically oriented and informatics educated have the adequate competencies, compassion and capabilities to underscore and influence the management because they can explain in detail the relationship of clinical information to the technical integration within a hospital system.

While most hospitals are still considering these concepts as new ideas and foreign .. assisting them to understand what it will facilitate toward progress and efficiency will be a priority goal. As the old saying says: Education is the Key to Competitiveness."

As of today, there are lots of buzz and interests in the Healthcare industry. Particularly with the advent of the US Healthcare systems revamp that will take place once the Healthcare Initiatives of President Obama will be successful to pass in the US Senate. The US House of Representative passed the Bill with final votes of 22O-215 as of November 7th 2009.

(c)2009JNTConsulting

Many hospitals and facilities have implemented their own initiatives in upgrading their systems to compete in the 21st Century. Professionals in both technical and healthcare professions are scrambling to increase their competencies under the so called 'Informatics'. In that way, they will become indispensable in the next few years ahead. Statistics show that there is a scarcity of experienced informatics healthcare professionals. Personal experience show that when consulting with clients in healthcare staffing arena it validated the shortage of needed technically experienced professionals.

"Education and learning is the goal to become competitive."

Please feel free to share your comments below. For inquiries about this article, please send to info@jntconsulting.com.

# # #