Degree Completion in Health Informatics
About Health Informatics
The field of Health Informatics deals with the use of information technology in healthcare and medicine to acquire, store, retrieve and process information such as patient history, test results and prescriptions. The field of health informatics has slowly but steadily grown to play a vital role in the fields of dentistry, nursing, surgery, diagnostics, healthcare administration, medical research, public health and medical insurance. A health informatics professional is responsible for developing, implementing and maintaining user friendly, reliable and secure information systems in hospitals, clinics and other facilities in addition to maintaining a patient’s electronic health records.
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About the Degree
Health Informatics is a relatively modern branch of healthcare and requires highly specialized instruction. A number of universities offer on-campus and online health informatics degrees and certification programs. The Bachelor of Science in Health Informatics includes a wide number of subjects, with courses ranging from microbiology to network management. Prerequisites include graduation from high school with courses in biology, public health or computer science. For those who wish to enter the field of health administration, master’s degrees in health informatics are also offered. A number of certification programs are also offered, including the Registered Health Information Administration (RHIA) and the Registered Health Information Technician (RHIT) certifications.
Career Prospects
The field of health informatics combines together two growing fields in the country – IT and healthcare – and holds considerable prospects for the future. The digitization of medical records, job prospects is now being preferred and around 37,700 new jobs are expected to be created between the 2010 to 2020 period as according to the BLS. The median annual salary of medical records and health information technicians was $35,900 in May 2014, with the top ten percent earning more than $59,160.