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In Thailand, I think health informatics is another emerging field in the Thai healthcare system. After we have the electronic medical record and plan to have a 5G organization. It’s time for informaticians to gathering all data that we have, to creates new things in order to improve patient center care, health care transformation and create a better health information system.
In most places, we implemented the IT systems that help the health care professionals to have a good coordination. However, The big challenges still remain. It’s all about how to apply a health informatics knowledge for health care system transformation to improve health care efficiency, decrease the duplicate work, reduce the gap and loss between process in health care services, especially for the personal health record sharing between hospital should be happening for seamless patient’s transfer.
Moreover, big changes in health care practices will coming so soon. The health care practices will not only targeted for the best care for each patient but also seeks the optimum management in terms of health economics and the system based health care practices. Informatics can help much in this issue and it will be another big challenge to gather data to improve the whole health care practice in Thailand. -
I think there is not enough health informatics workforce in Thailand. I have known no more than ten Thai doctors who are also health informaticians. Due to the current era of big data and technology, we should have more workforce in this field, especially health informatics. Health informaticians can help improve in many settings include EHR, PHR, referral system, hospital IT system, epidemiology (GIS), and statistics. The are many challenges in the health informatics workforce. Firstly. this career path should provide steady employment and appropriate numeration, especially in public organizations. If public organizations include public hospitals cannot provide these to their officers, they will lose to private organizations in recruitment competition. Secondly, inadequate health informatics teaching in medical school is one of the challenges. The medical institutions should add health informatics in their curriculum to provide more knowledge in this field and inspiration to medical students. Lastly, more training in health informatics including workshops, certificates, diplomas, bachelor’s degrees, and master’s degrees should be meticulously publicized and provided to general.
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I don’t know the exact number of health informatician in Thailand. However, the number of this career might not adequate to develop health technology system in this country. For example, I observed that the programmer develop a feast of software in order to assist the health care workers or patients, however, few of that software could be applied practically. We do not evaluate which software is effective while the others are not. Health informaticians could analyze throughout this problem and disseminate the knowledge so that the developer could make the useful software. The challenge of increasing health informaticians includes several factors. Firstly, I could not clearly see the career path of the health informatician whether there is few or it is not well introduced publicly. Secondly, the incentive for health informaticians is not as much as other professional. Thirdly, the course for health informatics is still limited in Thailand. These three factors are challenges for health information in Thailand.
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For me, when we talk about the workforce, we should talk about training. I heard that there are many programs in health informatics already in Thailand, especially in Mahidol. Besides the program we are doing here, there are other programs which have the same field as in health informatics and could be considered as tier 3 training, for example, at Faculty of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi, and Faculty of ICT.
In terms of the real workforce, I don’t know much about numbers or sufficiency of health informatician or related staff in the healthcare setting, especially in the public sector. But in the private sector, the informatic position has been increasingly recognized. As I know most of the global/national corporate has either newly appointed or newly designated as, for example, Chief Information Officer (CIO). The C-level executive is a sign showing the needs of specialist running the vital part of the new architecture of the company and to raise awareness on the application of informatics for development and improvement of the business. In healthcare, as I know, there are already some private hospitals has appointed this kind of position and it’s been improving their quality and services more effectively. Designation/appointment of position is important, as most people think health informatics is only about using IT at work and most of the organization already have IT, staff. We should think about recognizing health informatician as a dedicated position/required profession in the public health setting to speed up the development of the field in improving health care. It must be recognized by Law, the same as Physician, nurses, pharmacist and others.
Key factors of health informatics are involvement and understanding of healthcare worker, of the application of technology to improve health care. Most importantly, in addition to continuing education for health professionals as we are doing here, basic health informatics sciences should be also available in health science education curriculum at all level. That’s because not all health professionals would like to get their career development in health informatics but they are expected to get familiar with and have the capacity and understanding to take apart in the new way of working smoothly in the future. This may help improve the burn-out of the healthcare worker in the real work setting.
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Health informatics workforce in my country is small number which is mostly a group of programmers and mostly health organizations in Thailand cannot health informatics workforce for developed systems. I think, the challenge for developed consist of
1.All levels, service providers or Client are interested to use and they get benefits by Increase IT systems to be more important to people’s daily lives so that everyone sees the importance of using IT in public health systems such as general information, active drugs, Allergies, Smoking and give patients access to their own health information, etc.
2.The policy at the national level should be in the same direction and there should be agencies that look directly in this issue and must be a unit that understand the basic principles
3. Setting a database management system to exchange the information must be compatible at all levels.
4. interested to the development manpower and a work system for increase expert to appropriate foundations knowledge in program development such as setting up a help center, Support teaching.
5. Dare investment is critical for sustainable development in order to do a mega project in Health IT. That related with the government support seriously. -
I do not exactly know the situation of health informatics workforce in our country. But for sure there is few or no health informatician in our country. Only have health care providers and some technical support group (developers) form INGO. Challenges for developing informatic workforce are:
First one is health informatician of course who understands health care, information and communication technology.
Capacity building of existing workforce. There is no academic training related to health informatics in our country nor sending aboard to study informatics. There should be students exchange program for health informatics or fellowship program.
There should also be national strategic plan for e-Health. Although I’m working as Program Officer for EMR, do not have communication from anyone from e-Health Departments. All the program are fragmented due to lack of strategic plan. -
I think not enough health informatics workforce in thailand. In hospital and health office center there are health informatics workforce work in IT center but works only job order by head of officer. Every department used IT to reporting health information, every sector need health informations and data analysis on job.
I think, the challenge for developed health informaticials consis of1.Intentives for health information providers are lower than other occupations such as doctor, nurse.
2.health information providers have to regularly training in new tecnology.
3.All of health information providers have to used health information standard data system. -
We are in the era of Information and communication technology that can be used to improve the quality and safety of health care. In my opinion, although there are some Healthtech startups that do not solve the health problem in the Thailand context. There is an inadequate supply of skilled individuals who have the technical skills to use this technology to improve health care. As Khun Chanapong said that there are less than ten Thai doctors who are also health informaticians and a programmer or software engineer who interested in health informatics is just a small group.
To challenge this issue, It is important to identify and develop the skills, training to a person who is in a related field, for example, the doctor should have IT skills (help to analyze, design and utilize new technology – Phyton, Machine learning, Advance predictive, data analytics etc.) or IT worker should have medical knowledge (help to analyze, realize problem and design a system or software that match with user requirement etc.) An ideal approach will include needs assessment as well as education and training opportunities for that workforce.
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I had some experiences with the public hospital (tertiary care hospital). They have the IT department responsible for information technology and create new technology for the hospital following the director’s policy. But they cannot perform their work properly. Because they do not understand a lot of medical terms and they do not understand what the doctor need, which made the hospital can not use the information system for running their activities as much as their need. I think informaticians can help the hospital with this task and the hospital can run their activity with the IT platform as much as they need.
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Health informatics is actually a hybrid between health, IT, and management. Most people who work in this field right now are usually those who have experience working in projects related to health informatics. Although these people are very good at working in the health informatics field, but they might lack some potential theoretical concepts, particularly interoperability, and health data handling. The main problems as all of you have raised are that there is no official position or incentive specifically for health informaticians and lack of formal education program regarding this field.
I have to admit that I’m not the real health informatics person. My background is MD and Epidemiology with experience in applying IT in healthcare project. So, I decided to pursue public health informatics education and realized that there are many things that I have learned besides my working experience. I’m glad that all of you are interested in this field and try to improve your knowledge and skills from our BHI program.
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I totally agree with Aj. Saranath that we do not have an official position, most of the staff who seem to be health informatics have learned some special skill by experience at work. There is no formal education program in the health informatics field, so the informatics staff may be able to work on a particular scale especially in their job. This is one reason why I want to join this excellent BHI program.
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I think we should find and train more people who could create values in Health Informatics, leading a project, and creating a health product. Only then can we count competent personnel in Health Informatics.
Distribution is equally important as well, just like in PMAC clip about UHC, where a smart local people works devotedly to help their friends in remote area. In my experience, it doesn’t have to be local people, though; but we just need a devoted people, who are determined to work 4-hours distance far away…
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