Academic Recommendations from
Building the Work Force for Health Information Transformation

AHIMA and AMIA recently announced nine recommendations for academic institutions to "adequately prepare a healthcare work force capable of leading change and working in an electronic environment". These included:

• Collaborate to ensure standardization of informatics educational competencies are embedded in a variety of relevant curricula.
  
  
• Clearly articulate and market the competencies and skill sets for careers in applied clinical informatics, information management, and information technology.
  
  
• Encourage schools, colleges, and universities to use IT whenever appropriate in their education and training programs.
  
  
• Support faculty professional development in electronic information technologies.
  
  
• Build strong partnerships with state and local private sources of funding for information specialist training.
  
  
• Support the passage of legislation to strengthen programs and increase funding for health information/informatics education programs, student recruitment and retention, and faculty training.
  
  

• Increase the number of professionals who are trained in workflow redesign, care process or quality improvement, EHR implementation, and health information management.

• Reach out to young people with the right critical thinking skills through elementary, junior high, and high school. Participate in middle and high school career days and/or create both Web sites and local youth fairs.

• Implement awareness programs in schools, the media, and hospital patient education programs. To help create a demand for these tools; local celebrities may be useful as spokespersons.

AHIMA and AMIA. (2006). Building the Workforce for Health Information Transformation. Chicago, IL: American Health Information Management Association.