The UK’s Faculty of Clinical Informatics has pulled together this whitepaper about addressing the slightly depressing current state of clinical informatics teams in the UK. It rings very true for us in NZ as well.
Six years later, the Faculty of Clinical Informatics undertook an in-depth survey of health and care organisations and found that the number of staff varied enormously, with some organisations having as little as 0.5 clinical informaticians in post. Furthermore, we found that the size of an organisation was not related to the size of the clinical informatics team.
Here, the FCI is publishing its findings from a sample of clinical informatics teams in the UK. We have found successful clinical informatics teams:
are integrated into the wider digital and clinical workforce
thanks for sharing.
I still believe that in New Zealand if our Clinical Informatics folk had a unified voice (nationally or per region) they (and us architects) could together change the face of Te Whatu Ora Data & Digital to be more clinically driven and clinically led.
I have the pleasure of working with excellent Clinical Informatics leaders in Te Manawa Taki but I feel each one is under resourced (in terms of time they can allocate) for what is required, and collectively as a region we have less clinical informatics leads than we need.
…Imagine if we had clinical digital capability roadmaps which were partnered between clinical informatics leaders and D&D leadership, with workforce upskilling, technology delivery, and business change.
Anyway, thanks again for sharing and putting in time to encouraging collaboration and communication Nathan - appreciated
That is very true. I come from a perspective of a recent student graduate of Digital health and feel a clinical digital capability roadmap will be very useful for prospective students as well. I am doing a project on this very topic and I am interested in getting views from different stakeholders.
In order to drive the desired transformation there is need for greater involvement from the top to bottom (governance, management and shop floor ) which so far I have found is very fragmented.
Thank you for the white paper summary.
You’re right, @gillrufaro it’s very fragmented. And the more we try to create a pathway the harder it seems to get. The Australians have attempted it, and so have the Canadians, each with different starting points. Check out “The health information workforce. Current and future developments” (also available in university libraries) where we discuss in the first chapter the different frameworks and how our workforce is invisible and needs to come into the light of day so that what we do can be seen, described, used and documented as part of the greater health workforce.
If that isn’t a call to action, David, I’m not sure what is!
What I remain uncertain of is how to move from a connected online community of clinical informaticians (a.k.a ‘the rabble’) to an effective ‘unified voice’. Despite some heroic efforts by many (i.e. the CiLN position statement), we haven’t yet cracked this nut.
This looks like a highly valuable read, Karen! If only Auckland Uni hadn’t finally cut me off from their library…
This is all just my thinking and may not be representative of anyone else… but if the group had a top-20 focus recommendation list to @jon_herries and @robyn.whittaker or a top-20 current most timely / serious issues to address list - both endorsed by CiLN I wonder whether it could be a powerful voice of change.
Hypothetically if our D&D leadership could be asked where their response to the items was and a bit of healthy pressure it could help keep us on the straight and narrow.
I’m not sure if I’ll be shot for sedition with all these words but my heart is in the right place and that counts for something [right?]
I’m not a sociology expert but I remember being taught that as people form relationships, we differentiate (into groups with common interests) and stratify (form a hierarchy). This appears to be happening in CiLN with the different specialisation groups (traditional tribes and specialisations).
Business science I was taught says that businesses transition over time (and related to success) from adhocracy (what we call the CiLN rabble) to, in its most structured form, bureaucracy.
The current health system reform is aiming at reimagining the way we work and how we achieve our goals. I would argue that this kind of change can only be successful if it’s relationship-based. Question is: What do we want the CiLN community’s structure to look like? How do we at CiLN want to foster the kinds of relationships that nurture and support the clinical informatics work we do, while simultaneously living the reimagination of work?