Health Information Managers and the future needs of e-health

There are only a handful of tertiary education institutes in Australia that produce Health Information Managers (HIMs), despite the high demand for qualified health information management professionals in the healthcare industry. The high demand in the industry has not been converted into student numbers in tertiary education courses, forcing some institutes to cease offering these courses (McDonald, 2016a). In an era where we are surrounded by technologies and systems that deal with healthcare data, it is puzzling why students are not attracted to health information management or health informatics courses. When I put this question to an open forum at the recent Health Information Management Association of Australia (HIMAA) conference, there were very interesting responses. Some indicated that this profession is ‘not sexy’ and it is rather ‘boring’. The views of some senior academics were that universities should concentrate on converting people already with clinical expertise, such as nurses, into HIMs through postgraduate and research programs, rather than attempting to create HIMs at the undergraduate level. Others had pragmatic views about how courses should be offered in offline mode to attract more students. All of these are valid arguments. On this premise, this article explores skills needed by new-age HIMs and how tertiary education sectors could embrace the new wave of change