Health Informatics Professional Registration Standards

This video will look at the professional registration standards the UK Council for Health Informatics, or UKCHIP, has developed for health informaticians, and how those standards fit into the UKCHIP registration process. Health Informatics is becoming more and more important and integrated into all aspects of healthcare. There is an increasing need for people who are specialists in both health and informatics – to bridge the gap in understanding between clinicians, health managers and informaticians. But, there isn’t just one single entry route or qualification needed to become a health informatician – specialists can come from many different backgrounds. So, applicants for professional certification need to demonstrate that they meet a core set of standards in the knowledge and understanding of informatics, of health and of professional skills. The UKCHIP registration standards have been developed over a number of years and have included the evaluation of sources such as: • SFIA+ (Skills for the Information Age) • HINOS (Health Informatics National Occupational Standards • IMIA (International Medical Informatics Association) standards But only the UKCHIP standards have extended beyond these to encompass the whole of the HI community and all the constituencies it covers. Each of the other sets of standards just mentioned covers part of the area of health informatics but none except the UKCHIP standards cover the whole. SFIA+ for example focuses on skills for ICT professionals and doesn’t fully cover other health informatics areas such as information or knowledge management. The UKCHIP standards are divided into 4 areas: • Generic professional standards • Generic informatics standards • Specialist professional standards • Specialist informatics standards Generic Professional standards are areas that all professionals should understand, things like: • Autonomy • Self Management • Communication • Influencing and Negotiation The Generic Informatics Standards are informatics competencies that can apply to any area of work and include subjects such as: • Analytical Skills and Problem Solving • Data Quality • Information Governance and Security The Specialist Professional Standards are subjects that a professional working in healthcare should know, and these include: • Patients and the public • Medicine and care • Delivery of care Finally, the Specialist Informatics Standards are standards which are specific to informatics as it is practiced in healthcare and these include: • Information governance in health and social care • Primary and secondary uses of data in health and social care • Information systems in health and social care To achieve registration, applicants complete a self-assessment questionnaire against the standards, which is then verified by their nominated sponsor and assessed by one of UKCHIP’s trained assessors. Registration also requires commitment to the UKCHIP standards of behaviour and ethics. To find out more, visit the UKCHIP website at www.ukchip.org