I think we have a small number of health informaticians in Thailand and need to produce more people in the field. As I have observed both in the clinical and hospital areas, it turned out that many potential jobs have been fulfilled by non-medical personnel such as IT technician whom may lack medical knowledge or medical personnel who don’t understand IT system, these kinds of discrepancies resulted in miscommunication and might led to operational difficulties or even patients loss.

For example, in the emergency department, medical personnel tend to prioritize patient safety so they required an application interface that simple and has lowest amount of input to reduce time while technician tends to prioritize data input in the system as it needs to connect to another department such as finance, pharmacy, laboratory. In this case, both are not wrong if we have a cluttered user interface, personnel will waste time on the screen instead of taking care of patients, or if we don’t have data, we cannot bill the expense, order drugs, or find necessary lab results. In the end, both applications they pictured are drastically different. This type of scenario already happens in organizations that don’t have health information and I think it is our job to mediate between the two which would build the successful health IT implementation.

I think the health informatician was less than information technologist or programmer. In overall information technologist or programmer take all position in system development then the product may not proper for the users. In GEEKS program is the good program for develop the health informaticians in Thailand. The health informatician can see in overall of the system and have the creativity to develop better or new information technology system for health system. Health informatics workforce is the two domain of the six building box of the WHO health system model. In Thailand which low medical resource compare to workload or maldistribution of resource, the health informatics workforce is the key success for better health outcome. The problem not only the number of health informaticians but the training programs are limited.

To my little knowledge, I have seen much less informatician than IT specialist/developer and clinician/public health specialist taking place in the practice. Even my department only has doctors and IT specialists for developing health informatics projects. To lessen the gap of communication between us, the doctors have to self-learn IT basics, and the developers, basic medical terms. Still, the gap exists. The cons of the lack of informaticians are significant in both private and public sectors, which might take a number of pages to describe in words.
The challenges, in my opinion, lie in the resources, or the lack thereof. Limited availability of man: trainers, money: budget on informatics, materials: training resources and infrastructure for informatics projects to properly operate upon are the barriers to the graduates who are willing to become informaticians. Policies to support informaticians such as adding health informatics subjects in medical undergraduate curriculum would help increase the workforce to a certain extent.

A IT team used to be just a team who only take care health professionals’ computers. Currently, with the advanced in technology and data science, IT teams in many organizations are responsible for data management and system development with health professionals, public health officers, epidemiologists, and statisticians. However, IT professionals and health professionals often viewed as separate. This is a big challenge when we need some one who have all knowledge of IT, Public Health, and data science. A leader with the vision is also one of the most important challenge to build capacity of health information workforce. Which contribute to the opportunity of their workers to be trained and work in the right job.

I think there are not too many health informatics workforces in my country. We have both medical personnel and information personnel. But it is still unable to drive the health information system to its full potential.
The challenge is to develop a system together as a team, which is quite difficult.

In my opinion, informatics workforce in Thailand still open for everybody, there are many problems that need health informatician to explore, design solution, and implementation. The main challenge is how to implement interoperable data sharing between healthcare facilities. If we succeeded, seamlessly data sharing will improve data accuracy, validity, and immediately decision to response to situation. It also improve data security, privacy and confidentiality that enhance data creditability too.

In Thailand, we have both an expert in medical and an expert in IT but we still lack an informatician who is dealing with medical and IT information. The Thai government is now emphasis in digital transformation in the government sector focusing on the infrastructure of IT but lacking the building capacity of informatician and health informatics workforce.

In my experience, to build a health informatics workforce, the policy should include enhancing capacity for both human and IT’s infrastructure.

Thank you for providing a good vdo clip from Dr. Herman Tolentino and sharing about the how important of heath informatician in Healthcare organization and situation of health informatics workforce in developed (USA) and developing countries.

From the VDO clip present that the number of Health Informatician is still required in both developed and developing countries. So, the situation of health informatics workforce in Thailand is the same as other developing countries;
– Unique value of informatics workforce in healthcare increasingly recognized in public health system
– Informatics workforce is a serious challenge for 21st century
– There was no systematic research on current situation, needs, competencies and training
– Several initiatives e.g., training program for health workers, intensive course with collaborating of organizations like GEEKS, in academic setting to build stronger informatics workforce ongoing, but with limited capacity

As mentioned in the VDO clip that with the support from the CDC program, Thailand has implemented the FETP program and GEEKS program to increase/ building capacity of number of informatician in all 3 tiers; Mahidol University ( Biomedical and Health Informatic) serves as the tier 3 to produce the informatician.
So, the challenges of these issues are:
– Gaps to increase the capacity (especially in developing countries) must be identified
– Increasing capacity of existing workforce or practitioner to learn about basic health informatics
– Number of programs/courses that available for who interest
– The system for monitoring and evaluating the trained staffs after training
– Increasing number of requirements of health informatician to serve in both healthcare and health business development

I really like the wording “We should not be content to give fish or tech people how to fish. We should build a fishing industry”

Lastly, I do agree with “ the most important is how to produce or train people to be a good informatician.”

I think the main problem for information health professionals is that they are insufficient.
In our country, there are a lot of information workers that produce it to support the IT and IT workfource ,but one thing of the point is that they don’t understand much about medicine and health too much. Like in my office, our IT department has graduated in Computer, IT and Information Technology, but there are not graduates in this field. They can work without any problems, just that they do not understand medical information, Medical terminology, results from various laboratories and many others things related to the field of medicine.The other is bioinformatist, but they are more likely to work with molecular and data analysis laboratories. It was therefore seen that the importance of information health professionals is very necessary to help fill the problem of human resource shortage in this particular area.

In Thailand, first main problem is amount of informatician that work in health and public health fields. As Dr. Herman Tolentino mention kin the VDO clip, informatician isn’t just expertise in IT skill or health knowledge but should has both integrated basic knowledge and understanding to design, develop, and implement the information system and information utilization. We need potential organizations or institutes to develop informatician from anyone who interested in the field. In development process of informatician, is one of issue that challenge in health informatics workforce. Human resource development need the support and cooperation. In my opinion, lack of trainer and area for practice the skills are challenge problem that we face. Moreover public awareness about importance of informatician is may be the overall key successful. Authorities who related to health field have to realize the reasons why we need the health informatics workforce. The tools in their hand such as policy making, funding could support and build cooperation for informatician development.

Admittedly speaking, health informatics is one of the unpopular fields in our country’s health system. And as long as my knowledge goes, there’s no college nor university that teaches courses about this subject. On account of that, there are really a few health informaticians in my country. On the other hand, there are medical professionals who graduated health informatics subjects from international universities. Along with them, some of the IT technicians and some of the doctors whose interests lie in the IT fields are leading the health informatics projects in both private and public sectors, and form a major part of the existing workforce.

To run the health information systems in the country, we still need a significant number of health informaticians, and there are limitations in producing them. To tackle these issues, it is needed to cultivate the interest of health informatics in medical students. And once the interest is achieved, the programs and courses for health informatics should be made available to those interested students. And the curriculum of the medical-related universities also should contain the health informatics subject as a mandatory course. By those, the number for emerging health informatics workforce would be relatively high. After graduating from the universities, the job opportunities of the health informaticians should be widely announced. Last not but least, the salary for health informaticians should be made good and satisfactory. These would contribute to a greater number of entering the health informatics workforce.

Health informatics is still very new to our country. So we have very few health informatics workforces here. Instead, IT technicians and medical doctors discuss together to develop electronic health system in small projects in private, but still not much in public or countrywide. To fill the gap, 3E workforce style should be applied and GEEKS program should be introduced in our country which are mentioned in the lecture video.

Health informatics is still very new to our country. We do not have this kinda subject in college or university. So, we have very few health informatician workforce here who are graduated from other countries. IT technicians and medical doctors discuss together to develop electronic health system for small projects in private, but still not much in public or countrywide. To fill this gap, 3E workforce model should be applied and GEEKS program should be introduced in our country which are mentioned in the lecture video.