There are many opportunities to undertake roles in Health Informatics for the NHS or Social Care in mid and south Essex.
Health Informatics staff focus on utilising IT and available data to help improve patient care by gathering, analysing and utilising data. Health informatics supports informed decision making and improves the quality and efficiency of healthcare services.
Healthcare Informatics staff play an essential role in many tasks including:
- Analysing patient data to identify patterns and trends
- Develop and implement electronic patient records systems
- Managing and maintaining the electronic record systems
- Supporting the use of data driven tools to aid clinical decision making
- Work on research projects involving large sets of data to improve healthcare and outcomes
There are a wide variety of roles in health informatics and depending on your skills and interests you could work in one of the following areas:
- Clinical informatics
- Education and training
- Health records and patient administration
- Information and communications technology
- Information management
- Knowledge and library services
- Project and programme management
To be employed in any health informatics role you will need to demonstrate a good standard of literacy and numeracy and for some roles, employers will ask for GCSE’s or equivalent in maths and English. Digital skills and qualifications are also highly sought after as many NHS and Social Care settings rely on IT based systems to manage their databases and patient information. You would also need to demonstrate positive time management, communication and organisational skills for any administrative role.
Working for the NHS or for Social Care in Mid and South Essex provides many opportunities to develop your skills further and there are a wide range of apprenticeship, in-house training and continuing professional development opportunities available that you can use to build your career.
There are also opportunities to develop your career in health informatics by taking on additional responsibility and you could become a team leader, supervisor or an manager. There are also development opportunities to move to roles in the wider healthcare teams and you could support both clinical and non-clinical areas with your skills.
Health informatics roles tend to not have lots of face to face contact with patients and depending on your role, you could be based away from patient areas, focused on your project and research work.