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Exploring the health informatics occupational group in the 2018 Australian health information workforce census

, , , , , , ,
1 University of Tasmania, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
2 University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
3 Australasian College of Health Informatics, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
4 ALIA Health Libraries Australia, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
5 Victoria Department of Health and Human Services, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
6 Health Informatics Society of Australia, South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
7 Health Information Management Association of Australia, North Ryde, New South Wales, Australia
8 Australian Digital Health Agency, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.27626v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Evidence Based Medicine, Global Health, Public Health, Human-Computer Interaction
Keywords
Health informatics, workforce, census
Copyright
© 2019 Butler-Henderson et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Butler-Henderson K, Gray K, Pearce C, Ritchie A, Brophy J, Schaper LK, Bennett V, Ryan A. 2019. Exploring the health informatics occupational group in the 2018 Australian health information workforce census. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27626v1

Abstract

There has been no empirical evidence about the health informatics workforce in Australia produced in the last ten years. This study reports the findings from an analysis of a subset of the 2018 Australian Health Informatics Workforce Census data. Analysing 420 responses that were identified as the occupational group Health Informatics, the results indicate that whilst most of the workforce is classified as aged (>45 years), many respondents are still relatively early in their health informatics careers. Furthermore, most do not possess any formal education in health informatics and almost a quarter undertake their health informatics role alongside another health-related role. The broad range of position titles and functions demonstrates the breadth within this workforce. Ongoing monitoring of this occupational group is required to inform workforce reform and renewal.

Author Comment

The paper has been developed for the Health Informatics Conference 2019. If accepted, it will be published elsewhere. This PeerJ Preprint is to allow feedback to the draft paper. The final paper may differ from this version once it has been through a review process.

Additional Information

Competing Interests

The authors do not have any competing interests.

Author Contributions

Kerryn Butler-Henderson conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Kathleen Gray conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Christopher Pearce conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Ann Ritchie conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Julie Brophy conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Louise K Schaper conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Vicki Bennett conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Angela Ryan conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.

Human Ethics

The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

University of Tasmania Social Science Human Research Ethics Committee.

Data Deposition

The following information was supplied regarding data availability:

The Australian Health Information Workforce Census maintains an open data policy available at: http://www.utas.edu.au/health/projects/hiwcensus

Funding

The authors received no funding for this work.

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