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Working as an Allied Health Informatician

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The Health Information Workforce

Part of the book series: Health Informatics ((HI))

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Abstract

Allied health professionals are fast recognising the need to adopt digital health technologies in their service delivery models. Reasons driving this need include greater digitisation of healthcare systems, such as electronic medical records, and pressures on healthcare systems to rapidly deploy digital models of care, such as telehealth consultations. Despite a growing need to support the digital allied health workforce, there has been much volatility in formal educational opportunities, career development pathways, and leadership roles. The future of allied health informatics faces challenges, including its heterogeneity of professions, siloed tools and technologies, and ongoing issues surrounding change management, for example. However, striving to increase the profile and provide support for the advancement of digital health and informatics amongst this group of professions will help foster success; success in terms of improved patient outcomes, health system performance, and job satisfaction (to name a few). With greater attention to educating the emerging and existing workforce, mapping career progression, and lobbying for leadership opportunities, we envisage that a clearer profile of the digital allied health information workforce will emerge.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Digital Transformation of Health, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Mark Merolli & Dawn Choo

  2. School of Medicine, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Kirsty Maunder & Yasmine Probst

  3. East Metropolitan Health Service, Perth, WA, Australia

    Khye Davey

Authors
  1. Mark Merolli
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  2. Kirsty Maunder
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  3. Dawn Choo
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  4. Khye Davey
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  5. Yasmine Probst
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark Merolli .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Digital Health Hub, STEM College, RMIT University, Bundoora, VIC, Australia

    Kerryn Butler-Henderson

  2. School of Population Health, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Karen Day

  3. Centre for Digital Transformation of Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Kathleen Gray

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© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Merolli, M., Maunder, K., Choo, D., Davey, K., Probst, Y. (2021). Working as an Allied Health Informatician. In: Butler-Henderson, K., Day, K., Gray, K. (eds) The Health Information Workforce . Health Informatics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81850-0_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81850-0_21

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-81849-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-81850-0

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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