The first event of the Focus on the Future digital series, Digital Health in Action: Standards, Innovation and Practice, aimed to highlight the rapid and inevitable digitalization of healthcare. As artificial intelligence continues to increase its significance in healthcare, it is the responsibility of Health Information Managers to lead the implementation of emerging digital health initiatives, standards and best practices to better adapt to this everchanging landscape.
As Healthcare Informatics and Information students, we were particularly interested in understanding how these advancements in digital health may affect our future careers including emerging HIM jobs in the age of AI and the challenges Health Information Managers may face as a result of digital health solutions. The event makes it clear that the digital advancement reshaping our future careers is not designed to replace us, but to elevate us to becoming more strategic, and technology informed to fill the new emerging roles.
The emerging roles within this age of AI may include Clinical Documentation Integrity Specialist for Ambient AI Scribes, Clinical Data Annotator and AI Training Specialist, Healthcare AI Governance and Compliance Officer, Clinical Terminology Specialist for AI and NLP systems and AI-Augmented Coding Quality Analyst and Revenue Cycle AI Specialist. Each of these roles represent a major shift from the traditional system of record management to a more intelligent active governance of digital health.
These emerging HIM roles come with significant challenges beginning with most healthcare organizations flying “data blind”, and “data deficient”, workforce data limitation for planning, to mounting legislative pressure. All of these impede the strategic design of emerging AI roles for HIM professionals, by placing significant pressure on Health Information Managers to hastily acquire AI competency with minimal structural support provided. Overall, the event underscored the critical importance of adaptability within the HIM profession.
Authors:
Morgann Carr
University of Washington, Healthcare Informatics and Healthcare Information Management
Roland Foto
University of Washington, Healthcare Informatics and Healthcare Information Management
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