@simbinit-it is good to hear that you are addressing areas such as data analytics in HI, which is a step toward the right direction. My question to you is are there courses borrowed from other fields such as IT ( e.g. systems development, introduction to Information Technology) especially with the need to deliver artifacts. If so, have the topics been customized to suit HI? Have there been any challenges with this?
These questions are also open to all who are able to contribute on this.
This is a very important point @fverbeke and I would like to add that beyond providing graduates of HI programmes with market ready skills, we the stakeholders need to sensitize the healthcare industry on the availability of these skills. We may have skilled graduates, but as long as digital health positions are given to pure IT professionals the problem will still be here. I have medical colleagues who have no idea what health informatics (digital health) is and since they are the decision makers they will hardly think of HI professionals when the opportunities come up.
So aligning the skills imparted with market needs should be complemented by generating demand for these skills by simply creating awareness on their availability.
@jbngena you have brought up a very important point on sensitization. The interdisciplinary nature of health informatics requires continuous stakeholder engagements from the various respective professionals, which in turn will promote awareness of HI.
My apology for the late response, I notice gmail was sending this conversation to Promotions. My responses:
(1) What differentiates your bachelors from Masters in health informatics?
The BSC is the workhorse of the Master. These guys are expected to have core (generalist) software development and data analytics skills. The BSC will be able to grow either in developing solutions in health or data analytics expertise (ML and AI) sort of thing. The Masters will be more specific, they are focusing on their area of specialisation (biomedical (genomics), clinical or public health).
(2) What are the qualifications for each - i.e. do I need to do the bachelorâs first before I join the Masters? No you do not need a BSC to start a Masters. Let us note these programs are all just starting almost in every country. When we try at Masters we do not expect our Masters to be solid developers and data analysts at the same time. Two years is not enough. At the present moment, they will work at higher policy level. This is why we need the BSC who will have more indepth skills in 4 years time.
(3) Do you have any tracks - e.g public health informatics? - The are about four tracks at Masters level (Bioinformatics, Public Health Informatics, Nursing Informatics, Consumer Health Informatics) We are working towards the Precision Medicine track as well.
4) What has guided your selection of competencies? Well we looked at other programmes but we developed our core competencies especially at BSc level looking at the core needs in health informatics maturity model in country.
I hope this clarifies.
Yes we are taking courses from other disciplines. In fact the courses are essentially hybrids of existing programmes. The expectation is they must demonstrate solid competencies in software development coming up with health related software artefacts (this is supported by Computer Engineering) and Data analytics artefacts (Supported by Maths and Statistics).
I hope this clarifies.