Educational informatics, by the name itself, refers to the use of technology in teaching.

Modernizes and
upgrades the learning process to produce better outcomes later on.

5 SKILLS THAT CAN HELP YOU SUCCEED IN THE FIELD OF HEALTH INFORMATICS

Technological advancements, innovations, and discoveries have further revolutionized the healthcare
industry and making it vastly different from how it was decades ago. The application of technology in healthcare
have eased healthcare the lives of healthcare professionals since they make their work more effective, efficient,
and makes less room for human errors. Thus, health informatics is already an essential component of the medical
industry.

However, those who would want to pursue a career in the field of health informatics must possess and
learn certain skills in order to advance and succeed in it.

Basically, in this field, indi lang ya enough na you memorize the terms and concepts. Rather, you should
be equipped man with different skills as well.

Among all of the skills needed, these five skills are the most important: Communication Skills, Problem
Solving Skills, Analytical Skills, Interpersonal Skills, and Programming Skills.

1) Communication Skills
• Communication skills are the ability to send messages that are properly and entirely received and
understood by the target audience.
• The field of health informatics involves one to communicate with several people.
➢ In health informatics, it requires one to deal and interact with various departments and the
professionals under them as they collect data from various healthcare organization.
• As we have observed and noticed from our classes, health informatics deal with complex information
and often have to pass it to other people.
• Thus, good communication skills are highly needed to help health informaticists deliver precise messages
and minimize the chances of misunderstanding.
➢ Informatics professionals work with complex information and must be able to communicate this
information accurately
• Their communication skills help them translate complex information in easy-to-understand language and
enable them to convey an entire piece of information.
➢ This is important so that complicated data can be easily comprehended and understood well.
➢ It would also help health informaticists be able to effectively share information with fellow workers
and professionals in a clear and concise way.
• With that being said, good communication is essential to make clear explanations.
• Clear explanation of new processes and procedures can improve the environment for healthcare workers
and ultimately lead to better patient care and outcomes.

2) Problem Solving Skills

• Problem solving skills refers to our ability to solve problems in an effective and timely manner without any
impediments.
➢ It consists of a set of skills that help you identify the problem, propose solutions, choose the best
one, and implement it.
• Problem solving skills is a vital skills is a vital skill for both professional and personal life.
➢ In our day-to-day lives, problem solving skills is considered as a basic and necessary skill.
➢ In careers, they bear more importance and significance because people possessing these skills
can be valuable assets and put them ahead of their competitors.
• Employers like to see good problem solving skills because it also helps to show them you have a range
of other competencies such as logic, creativity, resilience, imagination, lateral thinking and determination.
• Working in a multidisciplinary environment means that an informatics professional must frequently solve
problems, often every day.
➢ This can take many different forms that can include sharing patient data amongst providers or
improving technological processes.
• Strong problem-solving skills help those in the field of health informatics overcome the problems and
issues that they would face and continue with their tasks.
➢ The daily responsibilities of health informaticists and other professionals involve problem-solving
in multiple settings.
o Some of which can be expected while some can come out of the blue.
➢ Even though this field utilizes technology and automated tools, problems can still arise and they
might go out of order.
➢ Thus, those who would want to pursue a career in this area must have good problem solving skills
to troubleshoot the issue immediately and so that work can go on in a blink of an eye.
• We have mentioned earlier that collaboration is a given in the field of Health Informatics.
 ➢ You would have to deal with several people, departments, and organizations. Thus, it can’t be
helped that there are times wherein problems and issues could take place.
➢ Whether you are dealing with technical devices, data analysis, or hindrances, problems arise
when working with multiple people.
• Problem-solving skills help health informatics professionals to compromise and maintain a healthy work
environment and continue with their work.
• One thing about problem solving skills that could help you would be mental flexibility.
➢ It refers to the personal adaptability and our willingness to shift our thought patterns to respond
to given situations in less regimented ways.
➢ To put it simply, it is all about the brain's ability to adapt to new, changing, or unplanned events.
➢ Developing mental flexibility to see the different sides of an argument is also part of this skill that
will help students thrive in a health informatics position.
• The ability to solve problems while having your mind at focus and fixated on your goal would highly help
you succeed in a career in health informatics.

3) Analytical Skills
• Analytical skills refer to the ability to collect and analyze information, problem-solve, and make decisions.
➢ Analytical thinking skills help people make better decisions even in challenging times.
• People who possess analytical thinking skills do not lose focus on the goal, stay composed and think
rationally even in tumultuous times.
• HI, professionals deal with detailed data and often have to break down large pieces of information.
• The analytical thinking skills of those in health informatics helps them keep an eye on the target and
perform the job efficiently and quickly.
• HI, professionals often have to make instant decisions.
• A strong presence of mind and analytical thinking skills support them in weighing pros and cons mentally
in no time and enable them to make the best possible decision as per the resources and circumstances.

4) Interpersonal Skills
• Interpersonal skills are capabilities to effectively communicate, socialize, connect, and cooperate with
people in life, whether it be an individual or a group.
• Even if health informatics can be considered as an automated and computerized field wherein
professionals have to work with several machines, tools, computers, and data, interpersonal skills are
still as important as other ones.
• Interpersonal skills include flexibility, conflict resolution, teamwork, and empathy.
• HI, professionals come across people from all healthcare organizations, and conflicts and issues are
inevitable.
• Interpersonal skills help them maintain professional relationships, and they perform their job efficiently.
• The ability to interact effectively with many different people is important because professionals in the
health field often work in a team environment with clinical staff, information technology professionals,
organizational decision-makers and even company presidents.

5) Programming Skills
• Refer to the art of using various programming languages to write commands, instructing a computer,
application, or software program about the actions it must perform and how.
➢ To put it simply, it is the skills required to write a program so that data may be processed by a
computer.
• Those who would want to pursue a career in the field of health informatics should consider learning about
programming languages.
➢ Such as Java, C, Python and SQL
➢ Since these are the ones that are commonly used in electronic health records and health
databases.
• These sets of skills are particularly helpful for positions that involve building information systems for
healthcare organizations.
• Computer programming is not necessarily a requirement for every health informatician, but familiarity
with programming languages can give you a competitive edge.

To sum it up:
If you’re willing and you are ready to pursue a career in the field of health informatics, it’s important to have these
skills along with the right education and training so that you’re not only prepared for the job, but you can also
excel in it.

Questions:

1. It refers to the ability to collect and analyze information, problem-solve, and make decisions.

a. Interpersonal Skills
b. Analytical Skills
c. Problem Solving Skills

Answer: B

2. Skills that help health informatics professionals to compromise and maintain a healthy work environment and
continue with their work.

a. Problem Solving Skills

b. Programming Skills
c. Interpersonal Skills

Answer: A
3. Skills in health informatics that include flexibility, conflict resolution, teamwork, and empathy.

a. Communication Skills
b. Interpersonal Skills
c. Analytical Skills

Answer: B

Personal Informatics
- Personal informatics refers to a class of software and hardware systems that help individuals collect
personal information to improve self-understanding.

Professional Informatics
- Health Informatics (HI) professionals are tasked with the important responsibilities of obtaining, storing,
organizing manage and utilize data for the purpose of improving the services provided by the healthcare
industry especially for patient care.

Educational Informatics
- A relatively new area of research, representing the convergence of aspects of information science,
computing, education, instructional systems technology, and learning sciences; and building on,
integrating, and extending these areas of endeavor.

1. A class of software and hardware systems that help individuals collect personal information to improve self-
understanding.

a. Professional Informatics
b. Research in Nursing Informatics
c. Personal Informatics

Answer: C

2. Public Health Informatics are most likely to work for a _____.

a. Private Agency
b. Commercial Agency
c. Government Agency

Answer: C

3. In Professional Informatics, they are tasked with the important responsibilities of obtaining, storing, organizing
manage and utilize data for the purpose of improving the services provided by the healthcare industry especially
for patient care.

a. HI Professionals
b. Patients
c. Significant Others

Answer: A

Using the tool

Remembering
Lack of time
Motivation
Finding data
Accuracy

4. The following are considered as collection barriers except?

a. Remembering
b. Memory
c. Lack of Time

Answer: B

5. Regarding the responsibilities of HI professionals, health informatics is said to be a ____ job.

a. Diverse
b. Difficult
c. Dull

Answer: A