Clinical Informatics Specialist Managers make sure that clinical services are supported by effective digital systems, and that technology genuinely improves patient care, safety, and efficiency.
Working Life
Working as a clinical informatics specialist manager means that you’ll take part in a variety of different tasks during your working day. These can include:
- A daily catch-up with informatics specialists, project officers, or clinical digital champions to review priorities and progress.
- Responding to queries from clinicians, speaking to IT teams about planned downtime, or senior leaders wanting status reports.
- Going to wards, outpatient clinics, or theatres to understand workflow challenges
- Chair or attend meetings with IT, clinical leaders, and external suppliers to discuss progress on projects.
- Review how clinical data is being used for audits, quality improvement, or reporting. For example, looking at sepsis alerts or discharge summary timeliness.
- Troubleshoot issues escalated by staff.
Role Requirements
Becoming a clinical informatics specialist manager means that you will already have a background as a clinical team member. You could have worked previously as a nurse, an allied health professional or as a doctor and will also need to have experience in health informatics or digital projects.
While not always mandatory, qualifications are increasingly expected or desirable for this role. They can include:
- Fellowship of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics (FFCI)
- Postgraduate certificate/diploma or MSc in:
- Health Informatics
- Clinical Informatics
- Digital Health
- Specialist training/certification:
- NHS Digital Academy (Digital Health Leadership Programme)
- EHR vendor training (Epic, Cerner, System C, etc.)
- PRINCE2 or Agile project management qualification
Personal Characteristics
To work successfully as a clinical informatics specialist manager, you need to consider your own personal characteristics. You would need to have the following attributes or similar:
- An in depth knowledge of NHS systems, policies and clinical workflows
- Knowledge of clinical safety standards
- Good understanding of information governance, data protection (GDPR), and cyber security basics.
- Evidence of managing people/teams (band 6–7 leadership or above).
Skills Required
To work successfully as a clinical informatics specialist manager, you need to consider the skills that you have. You would need to demonstrate the following:
- Be well organised and able to plan your time
- Be able to communicate with a variety of people using different methods
- Be able to interpret data
- To work as part of a team
- Work well under pressure
Further Training and Development Opportunities
Once qualified as a clinical informatics specialist manager, you can continue to develop your career over time. You’ll have access to a yearly continuing professional development (CPD) check-in where you can discuss any additional training needs or qualifications you would like to achieve.
Once you have experience as a clinical informatics specialist manager, you can specialise in a number of different areas including electronic patient records (EPR) and clinical systems, digital medicines and prescribing, clinical safety and governance, data, analytics and population health or digital transformation.
Pay and Benefits
Clinical informatics specialist managers usually work around 37.5 hours per week. Depending on the role and the setting you work in, you may be required to work shifts, nights, evenings or weekends.
Clinical informatics specialist managers in the NHS are paid using the Agenda for Change (AfC) system and will typically start their career on AfC band 7 but with experience, further training and additional qualifications, can progress further up the pay scale.
Other benefits of working within Health Informatics include access to a pension scheme, health service discounts such as a Blue Light Card and 27 days of annual leave in addition to bank holidays.