Building health informatics skills for health professionals : results from the Australian Health Informatics Skill Needs Survey

Objective: To ascertain health professionals’ perceptions of health informatics skills required in their roles. Design: A paper-based survey with a stratified random sample of Australian health professionals and a web-based survey open to all Australian health professionals were conducted. Measurement: A questionnaire on the health professionals’ perceived degree of competency required for a total of 69 specific skills in five skill categories based on the International Medical Informatics Association’s (IMIA) set of recommendations on education and IMIA’s scientific map. Results: 462 health professionals responded to the paper-based questionnaire, and 167 respondents to the Internet questionnaire. Internet respondents reported higher required degrees of competency for specific health informatics and information technology skills than paper respondents, while paper respondents valued clinical skills higher than the Internet respondents. Conclusion: Health professionals increasingly use information technology (IT), and some also deploy, research or develop health care IT. Consequently, they need to be adequately educated for their specific roles in health informatics. Our results inform developers of educational programs while acknowledging the diversity of roles in health informatics and the diversity of pathways towards a professional health informatics qualification.