Skills for the Future: Informatics Skills for Information Professionals

1. Skills for the Future: Informatics Skills for Information Professionals Jillian M. Ketterer1, Nora Smith2, MSLIS, Prudence W. Dalrymple, PhD3Center for Innovation, National Board of Medical Examiners1, Johns Hopkins University2, Institute for Healthcare Informatics, iSchool, Drexel University3 New Opportunities for Information Professionals Library and Information Science: An Evolving Paradigm What Does Drexel Have to Offer? The Necessary Skills :What Can Informatics Classes Teach YOU? • Competitive Intelligence Analyst • Help business gain advantage over competitors via environmental scanning • Information/evidence used in strategic planning • Health Information Systems Analyst • Bridge the gap between information users and computer programmers to improve information systems • Informaticist • Apply computers and information technology in field of choice • Informationist or Information Specialist In Context (ISIC) • Connect patrons with information/evidence • Physical proximity to patrons (work outside of the library) • Integrate into the research team • Information Analyst • Plan, scope, and manage business projects through analysis of relevant data and information • Monitor and interpret trends of interest • Knowledge Manager • Help organization gain value from its knowledge and intellectual assets • Ensure that institutional knowledge flows appropriately throughout the organization • Systems thinking • Understand the underlying pattern and structure of the information organization and technical databases • Information needs and underlying psychology of the user population • Uncover the underlying relationships between the library and the patron population • Human computer interaction • Bridge gaps between developers and users • Design more intuitive and user-friendly interfaces • Information retrieval skills • Particularly from online or electronic databases • Knowledge and familiarity of print resources • Gain a different perspective on information storage, management, and retrieval • Interdisciplinary Skills • Connect seemingly disparate concepts across knowledge domains • Identify opportunities for innovation and systems improvement • Lifelong Learning • Continuous professional development is crucial to keep up with the state of the art • …and more! Certificate in Healthcare Informatics - 3 Core Courses (http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/ihi/) INFO648 - Healthcare Informatics This course is an introduction to Healthcare Informatics, broadly construed. Healthcare Informatics studies the organization of medical information, the effective management of information using computer technology, and the impact of such technology on medical research, education, and patient care. INFO731 - Organization & Social Issues in Healthcare Informatics Presents an overview of sociotechnical issues in healthcare informatics, focusing on patient care and biomedical research settings. Deals withhuman, social, and technologicalaspects of healthcare IT. Focuses on the roleof information professionals in applied healthcare IT settings. INFO780 - Advanced Issues in Healthcare Informatics This course is intended to provide a broad overview of the concepts, terminology and strategies needed to designand evaluate projectsin healthcare informatics. Through online lectures, readings and discussion of case studies, students will acquire a basic familiarity with various approaches to planningand evaluation. The major projects, which will be developed over the duration of the course, will provide students with an opportunity to develop a proposalfor a potential implementation in a setting of their choice, and select an evaluation approachthat is appropriate. Crossing Traditional Boundaries References and Further Reading Bates, M. J. (1999). The invisible substrate of information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(12), 1043-1050. Friedman, C.A. (2009). A 'fundamental theorem' of biomedical informatics. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 16, 169-170. Giuise, N.B. (2008). Riding the waves of change together: are we all paying attention? Journal of the Medical Library Association, 96 (2), 85-87. Hersh, W. and Wright, A. (2008) What workforce is needed to implement the health information technology agenda? An analysis from the HIMSS Analytics™ Database. AMIA Annu Symp Proc, 303-307. Hersh, W. (2009). A stimulus to define informatics and health information technology. BMC Medical Informatics & Decision Making, 9, 24. Perry, G.J., Roderer, N.K., and Assar, S. (2005). A current perspective on medical informatics and health sciences librarianship. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 93 (2), 199-205. Rankin, J.A. Grefsheim, S.F., and Canto, C.C. (2008). The emerging informationist specialty: a systematic review of the literature. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 96 (3) 194-206. From Hersh (2009)7 What is Informatics? Informatics is a field of study focused on the optimal use of information, often aided by the use of technology, to improve individual health, health care, public health, and biomedical research (Hersh, 2009) Informatics studies the representation, processing, and communication of information in natural and engineered systems. It has computational, cognitive and social aspects. (http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/about/vision.html) from http://informationr.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis29fig2.JPG • Information science: • “…is a field that cuts across …the conventional academic disciplines.” (Bates, 1999) • encompasses both traditional and emerging information paradigms such digital libraries, librarians-in-context, and online social networking • focuses on the information itself rather than the subject matter (art history, medical anthropology, electrical engineering, literary analysis, molecular biology, etc.) • focuses on the underlying structure of information use, storage, and retrieval • deals with the transmission of human knowledge • incorporates both social and technical aspects of information Contact Us Jillian M. Ketterer Information Analyst, Center for Innovation Lead Graduate Peer Mentor, iSchool, Drexel Universityjketterer@nbme.org http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/PS/gradmentors/find/mentordetails/?ID=3 Nora N. Smith, MSLISBasic Science Informationist Trainee, Johns Hopkins University nora.n.smith@gmail.com Prudence W. Dalrymple, PhD Director, Institute for Healthcare Informatics, iSchool, Drexel University pwd28@drexel.edu http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/ihi/faculty.htm Your Future in Informatics Health Informatics Specialist was named one of the top “ahead of the curve” careers in U.S. News & World Report (http://www.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2008/12/11/ahead-of-the-curve-health-informatics-specialist-2009.html) The American Medical Informatics Association also estimates that the nation will need 10,000 professionals trained in informatics by the year 2010. (http://www.amia.org/10x10) Informatics may mean many things to many people, but it always involves: computers, information, information users, and a context/discipline.