Investing in tomorrow’s digital and health informatics leaders

The Cer­ti­fied Health Infor­mati­cian Aus­trala­sia (CHIA) pro­gram is man­aged by the Aus­tralasian Insti­tute of Dig­i­tal Health and was devel­oped to address the lack of for­mal recog­ni­tion of health infor­mat­ics knowl­edge and skills in Australia.

CHIA is bestowed on those indi­vid­u­als who suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete the CHIA exam. The exam­i­na­tion cov­ers a wide range of top­ics, across six domains of Health Infor­mat­ics, com­pris­ing 53 com­pe­ten­cies, con­sid­ered essen­tial to a health infor­mati­cian in Australasia.

The pro­gram is aimed at work­ers across health infor­mat­ics and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy roles, and once cer­ti­fied, par­tic­i­pants can demon­strate exper­tise in health infor­mat­ics princi­ples, con­cepts, meth­ods and skills, with the abil­i­ty to apply these in the workplace.

As a CHIA Cham­pi­on organ­i­sa­tion, the CEIH were over­whelmed with the num­ber of appli­ca­tions received for the 2022 round of spon­sor­ship. Appli­cants span the health­care sec­tor, includ­ing 10 from coun­try health, 4 from SA Ambu­lance and 4 from the pri­vate sec­tor. Allied Health and Nurs­ing rep­re­sent more than a quar­ter of the total appli­ca­tions, indi­cat­ing that health infor­mat­ics can play an impor­tant role in direct patient care. 

We spoke to a num­ber of the short­list­ed appli­cants on why they applied:

• “CHIA will assist me to keep my use of data and infor­ma­tion in line with best prac­tice and thus have an influ­ence on patient care through improved deci­sion making.
• Hav­ing clin­i­cians who are skilled in infor­mat­ics is impor­tant in devel­op­ing our health system’s capa­bil­i­ty in util­i­sa­tion of our clin­i­cal and health data in order to improve patient expe­ri­ence and outcomes.” 
• “My par­tic­i­pa­tion to the pro­gram is expect­ed to ben­e­fit SA health sys­tem by improv­ing the care coor­di­na­tion for can­cer patients, it adds to ensur­ing ongo­ing high qual­i­ty care pro­vi­sion by SA Health for patients and oth­er stake hold­ers involved.” 
• “I believe that the strate­gic use of health infor­mat­ics is key to improv­ing ser­vice deliv­ery and patient safe­ty in the pre-hos­pi­tal (ambu­lance) set­ting. Broad­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion will also allow for improved infor­ma­tion shar­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion between LHNs.
• I hope to com­ple­ment my exist­ing knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence with CHIA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in order to help dri­ve inno­va­tion. While I am not cur­rent­ly involved in a project requir­ing data and sys­tems analy­sis, I have done so in the past and hope to again in the future.”

We’re excit­ed to be able to invest in the future of Health Infor­mat­ics lead­er­ship in South Aus­tralia and wish all appli­cants the best of luck as they enter the 90 day study period.