Gap in Health Information Management puts Canadians at Risk

Hamilton, October 18, 1999 - Many bad decisions about healthcare are made every day in Canada because decision-makers lack the right information, at the right time, and in the right place. These bad decisions can cost the country millions of dollars and rob Canadians of the health care they need and deserve. Health information specialists can help remedy this problem.

Decisions that are made about the health system - like funding for diagnosis and treatment of many diseases - are only as good as the information on which they are based. And there is no shortage of information; two million new medical research papers are published each year. The stumbling block to integrating these and other findings into the decision-making process is not one of technology - the technology is there - but rather one of having enough professionals who understand health care issues and can manage the technology required to retrieve, analyze, and synthesize the available information.

Individuals with expertise in health information management, known as health informaticians, are in high demand across North America, particularly in light of fallout from health services restructuring. The latest information out of the United States suggests that the roughly $7 billion spent annually on health information technology will rocket upward to an estimated $32 billion by 2002, escalating the need for health informaticians. Unfortunately, at present the demand for skilled health informaticians already exceeds the available supply.

Given the demand, the obvious question is: why is the supply of skilled health informaticians so low? The answer is that there is but one, dedicated, Bachelor's-level program in health informatics in Canada. There are no dedicated, graduate-level programs.

An investment of $50,000 by the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) in an new initiative being spearheaded by the Health Evidence Application and Linkage Network (HEALNet) is intended to begin the process of increasing the supply of health informaticians to meet Canada's current and future demands.

The CIHR investment, to which HEALNet will be adding $30,000 from its own budget, will be used to bring together a critical mass of expertise from across Canada to develop model curricula for health informatics education. The model curricula will enable Canadian universities to offer high-quality health informatics courses and programs at all academic levels, without individually reinventing the wheel. The curricula will also be applicable to the post-professional education level and to programs designed for the clinical and allied health professions.

"Enhancing Canada's capacity to train people who can use the wealth of information that is out there to optimize performance and outcomes within the health system is of critical importance," says Kathryn Hannah, Chair of HEALNet's Board of Directors, and Vice-President and Chief Health Informatician of Sierra Systems Consultants Incorporated. "HEALNet is well-positioned to act as the catalyst for this project because it can be a neutral information broker among Canadian universities and between the project's stakeholders and Canada's leading thinkers in the field of health informatics."

Dr. Brian Haynes, a HEALNet research leader, experienced clinician, and Chair of McMaster University's Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, will oversee the development of the model curricula. "We can get better health care for less with the help of skilled health information specialists," says Haynes. "We aim to ensure that Canada has enough of these experts to benefit from all the wonders that modern health care can provide."

The initial curricula development workshop is scheduled for December 7, 1999 and will be delivered via video conferencing at various university sites across Canada. Subsequent workshops will be undertaken through a combination of audio conferencing and Internet document conferencing over a six to ten-month timeframe. A national networking infrastructure will be created to continue multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral work on this initiative even after the model curricula are developed.

For additional information on HEALNet's educational initiatives, view http://hiru.mcmaster.ca/nce/default.htm.

Backgrounder
HEALNet, a federal Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE), is dedicated to enhancing the health of Canadians and improving Canada's competitiveness in the global marketplace for health information tools, resources, and technologies. The Network seeks to accomplish these goals by developing and implementing strategies that promote the use of evidence-based research findings among decision-makers in the health system and the workplace. In addition, HEALNet researchers devise health information tools and technologies that bridge the gap between health research and health decision-making. Training the next generation of health services researchers is also a priority.

HEALNet, as a member of the NCE Program, has received core funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) since 1995. The NCE program is a unique partnership among universities, industry, government, and other organizations.

The Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) has a mandate to forge an integrated health research agenda across disciplines, sectors, and regions that reflects the emerging health needs of Canadians and the evolution of the health system. The Opportunity Program is intended to foster collaborative networks within the health research community that can develop research agendas, research consortiums, key areas of science, and new programs to address research personnel development. The Opportunity program is also intended to support initiatives that facilitate clinical, health services, and translational research in CIHR.