ehealth Career Path: Clinical and Health Services

Path Description

Clinical professionals such as physicians and nurses often are not sharp when it comes to computers – conversely, technology folks who work on ehealth projects often are not strong clinically. On an ehealth team, the Clinical & Health Services category of roles is responsible for liaising clinical professionals with technical members of the team. They will translate between clinical terms and information system language so that clinical professionals and technical members can communicate with each other better in the multidisciplinary ehealth team. From experience, I’ve seen this role to be frequently taken on by ehealth professionals who previously worked as health or allied health professionals.

Preferred Background

  • Undergraduate education in health (health studies, population health, nursing) or allied health (MRT(R), dental hygienist, medical sonographer, dietician, radiographer, speech language pathology, etc.)
  • Undergraduate education in health professional school such as pharmacy, medical school, dentistry
  • 1 year working experience in healthcare either as staff or volunteer or co-op
  • Familiarity with technology

Relevant Certifications

  • CPHIMS-CA
  • Health Information Management Certificate (CHIMA)

General Job Responsibilities

  • Liaise between clinical and technical or analytical staff teams
  • Develop policies and strategies to incorporate new technology tools in clinical workflow
  • Plan integration of clinical systems across an organization (ie. a hospital, a healthcare facility, a long-term care home, etc.)
  • Work with ehealth professionals from other levels of healthcare system to integrate clinical systems across province or country
  • Evaluate existing clinical problems or inefficiencies to address for improvement
  • Provide training to clinical staff on information systems
  • Provide support to clinical staff to troubleshoot clinical systems
  • Provide clinical expertise to technical and analytical teams

Career Progression

Seniority

Example Job Title

Salary Range[1]

Entry Level

Clinical Informatics Coordinator

$50,000-$70,000

Intermediate Level

Clinical Informatics Analyst

$60,000-$95,000

Expert Level

Clinical Informatics Manager/Director

$90,000+

Executive Level

Chief Clinical Information Officer

Unconfirmed

Sample Interview Questions

  1. Tell us about a time where you had to work in an interdisciplinary team, what were the challenges and how did you overcome them?
  2. What are some existing issues with technology adoption in healthcare in Canada?
  3. Tell us about your clinical background.

Related Article: Career Paths for ehealth, Digital Health, Health Informatics Professionals