Time is running out to participate in the Australia and New Zealand specialist digital health workforce census which closes May 31.
Professor Kathleen Gray OAM from the Centre for Digital Transformation of Health, The University of Melbourne, said, “We are witnessing unprecedented levels of investment in digital health, AI in healthcare, and virtual care, and ever-increasing expectations of service improvements. But there is no other area in the health sector where the specialised workforce needed to ensure the fundamentals of efficiency, safety and quality is so unrecognised.
“Collecting data from the people in this workforce now is essential for the sector to understand that work with health information systems and technologies is professional work, and to plan how to build up this workforce in the future.” Professor Gray said
Head of Discipline for Digital Health Salma Arabi said, “The ANZ Specialist Digital Health Workforce Census is more than a data collection exercise. It’s a mechanism for change.
“The findings help guide workforce development, highlight capability gaps, and ensure that digital health professionals are supported to meet the growing demands of modern healthcare systems.”
The Specialist Digital Health Workforce Census has been running since 2018 and is designed to build a picture of professionals working across health informatics, data and information management.
This year’s survey will again invite clinicians, informaticians, data specialists and health information professionals to participate.
Previous census findings have pointed to a workforce in transition, with traditional health information roles evolving as well as rapidly growing demand for data analytics, interoperability expertise and digitally enabled models of care.
The census will inform workforce planning, education and policy, at a time when health services are scaling electronic medical records, virtual care and AI-enabled tools.
By tracking changes over time, the study is expected to provide insight into whether the sector is building the workforce capability needed to support increasingly complex digital health environments.
Go to Census.
