Health information workforce census: Project overview
Health organisations and national health systems are increasingly adopting digital health. Digital health technologies (including mobile technologies, social media and wearables) are often large-scale implementations that allow integration and data exchange across health service provider organisations and among care providers, researchers and public health. Health service redesign is underpinned by bodies of knowledge in health information management, health information systems, health information technology, and holistically, health informatics. Thus, with digitally-enabled ways of working in health has come a rising recognition of the importance of health information infrastructures within health care. This in turn has placed a new focus on the people who work with health information, and the concept of health information work as specialised work, encompassing roles such as health information professional, health IT manager, health information manager, clinical information officer, health informatician, clinical classifications officer, data analyst, and health librarian.
What do these roles entail, exactly? The challenges that exist in identifying the unique characteristics of such work have become more and more complex. Longstanding discussions of the convergence of health information roles have persisted into recent years in the literature. The unifying or common dimension generally acknowledged is that these roles are concerned with optimising the use of data, information, and knowledge as broadly as possible throughout the health system. Health information professionals have advocated for clearer definitions of the health information workforce: What is its scope, knowledge domain, professional competencies? This has partly come about through health information professionals’ concerns about lack of recognition as a contributor to health care services, and in response to recently-introduced broad-ranging regulation and registration of other sorts of health professionals. There is a clear call for a census to quantify and qualify the health information workforce (HIW).
Study aim and objectives: The aim of this study is to quantify and qualify the HIW, specifically to delineate and count the workforce, consider the future configuration of workforce, identify health information workforce shortfalls, and identify current health information training and career pathways.
The objectives of the study are:
- Deploy the HIWC in 2018, 2020, 2023, and 2026.
- Analyse the HIWC data to quantify and qualify the workforce between 2018 – 2026.
- Undertake forecasting of the HIW.
- Explore career progression in the HIW through a longitudinal case study.
Study design: This study is a census in the form of a questionnaire applied as a survey, to be conducted in 2018, 2020, 2023, and 2026. Participant recruitment will use a snowball method via stakeholders, i.e. leaders in the health sector who are able to forward the census link to appropriate organisations and services for participants to self-select and complete. The census is for anyone who self-identifies as being a member of the Australian health information workforce.
Data collection and analysis: The data will be collected via Qualtrics via The University of Auckland’s license. The data will be downloaded into an Excel spreadsheet for statistical analysis. Qualitative data will be coded and thematically analysed.
International census: The first census was conducted in Australia by the project initiators, Dr Kerryn Butler-Henderson of the University of Tasmania, and Associate Professor Kathleen Gray of the University of Melbourne. The New Zealand census will be the first international collaboration to pilot the concept of a multinational HIW census collaboration. Once the New Zealand census has been completed the collaboration will be extended to other countries. This means that the data collected from each country will be shared in a password protected system, in order to compare and contrast results.
Data access: The census project has an open access data plan. Applying the same principles as the MABEL study (http://mabel.org.au/research/data) individuals and organisations can request access to the census data. A Data Access policy and associated forms are available on the census website.
Project governance: The initiating (Australian) project has a Management Group. Each collaborating country will have a Steering Group consisting of collaborating researchers and senior executives of key stakeholders. Each census will require ethical approval from an appropriate ethics committee and will be accountable to the Management Group.
For more information: Contact Dr Karen Day on k.day@auckland.ac.nz or phone her on 09 923 3870.
Approved by the University Of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee on 19 November 2018 for three years. Reference Number 022223.
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