Health informatics is the study of how to collect, store and use data to improve health outcomes and healthcare operations.
By: All Allied Health Staff
If you’re a tech whiz who’s passionate about healthcare outcomes, you may be interested in a growing field that combines information technology, clinical practice and business management. It’s called health informatics, and it’s all about how technology can improve the way health data are collected, stored, processed and communicated.
Key takeaways
- Health informatics and health information management (HIM) are closely related fields that both sit at the intersection of healthcare, data and technology.
- Health informatics focuses more on using data to optimize healthcare operations and improve patient outcomes, while health information management is more concerned with the daily maintenance of healthcare data.
- Both fields have strong job growth outlooks as health systems and organizations expand to keep up with growing healthcare demands.
“Health informatics is the interprofessional field that studies and pursues the effective uses of biomedical data, information and knowledge for scientific inquiry, problem-solving, decision making, motivated by efforts to improve human health. In other words, it is the science of information where the information is defined as data with meaning,” says a report from the National Library of Medicine.
More and more schools are offering health informatics degrees either as standalone programs or as concentrations within broader health information management programs. But what’s really the difference between these two fields?
Health information management focuses more on the daily organization, accuracy and security of patient and health systems data.
What are the main differences?
Here’s a breakdown of some key differences among both fields.
Health informatics
Required education
Education requirements can vary depending on job scope, but a bachelor’s degree is common.
Typical duties
Common job titles
Certifications available
Health information management
Required education
Education requirements vary but a bachelor’s degree is typically required at minimum. Many leadership roles also prefer or require candidates to have a master’s degree.
Typical duties
Common job titles
Certifications available
Education comparison
Education requirements for both health informatics and health information management jobs can vary significantly depending on the specific type of job. In general, most people typically need at least a bachelor’s degree to enter the field. A bachelor’s degree in health informatics or health information management are great choices, but a degree in more general areas like informatics, healthcare administration or healthcare management could also set you up for success.
Whether you earn one before you start working or after you’ve got some experience under your belt, you might want to consider earning a master’s degree at some point. This is especially true if you already earned a bachelor’s degree in another field. Advanced leadership roles in either field often prefer or require a master’s degree the higher you climb the career ladder.
Accreditation
Make sure to search for accredited programs when you start searching for a degree. Accreditation ensures that the school and/or program meets certain academic standards, and it’s also necessary to qualify for any federal financial aid.
Whether you’re considering a career in health informatics or health information management, programmatic accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education (CAHIIM) is what you should look for.
Salary and job outlook comparison
It can be difficult to compare salaries for health informaticists versus health information managers since specific job titles within these fields can fall into several different employment categories. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that the median annual salary for medical and health services managers (which would most likely include health information managers) is $117,960, with an estimated job growth of 23.2% through 2034, much faster than the average across all occupations.
Health informatics professionals likely fall under the BLS occupation category of health information technologists and medical registrars. Professionals in this group earn a median annual salary of $67,310, and are estimated to grow 14.7% through the next decade. While this isn’t quite as fast as the former, it’s still a very strong job outlook for the coming years.
