Health Informatics in the Classroom: An Empirical Study to Investigate Higher Education's Response to Healthcare Transformation

The explosive advances in information technology combined with the current climate for health care reform have intensified the need for skilled individuals who can develop, understand, and manage medical information systems in organizations. Health Informatics facilitates quality care at a reasonable cost by allowing access to the right data by the right people at the right time. A new generation of professionals, trained in health informatics, can expedite the transformation in healthcare delivery. This study examines health informatics, big data in the field of healthcare, and the distinction between clinical and non-clinical health informatics. Curricula, of different scopes and depths, offered by higher education, are examined and questions of what, who, where in regard to offerings in the healthcare arena are addressed. Finally, we make suggestions for actions that academia can take to assure that public health professionals have the knowledge, tools, and training to advance the mission of public health. The results of this study should be of interest to those, who directly or indirectly, would benefit of educating a new generation of the workforce in health informatics.