When I first graduated from my Masters in Biomedical Engineering, my impression was that after all this schooling it would be relatively easy to find a job in my field. However, this was not the case at all! What really helped me to get my first job was primarily the network I grew during school and after school, attending events related to digital health and health informatics.
For instance, I attended an event called “Hacking Health” which was a hackathon where people from multiple different backgrounds (e.g., computer science, medicine, public health etc…) got together to try and use their individual unique skills to help solve a healthcare problem. The team that I worked on included developers, clinicians and engineers and our focus was to build a mental health app targeted for doctors. I learned a lot being on that team but one of the best parts was I was able to grow my network and meet people from diverse backgrounds. This furthered my job search much more than just sending my resume into the dark void of Indeed or LinkedIn.
Speaking of the job search, one of the pain points when it comes to searching for a job in health informatics is that this field is still fairly new, therefore, it can be confusing for new grads to even know which roles to apply to. In this blog post, I am going to give potential roles you can apply to TODAY in the health informatics field:
Clinical Systems Analyst: Some hospitals will use software vendors to develop computer information systems or analytic products. A clinical systems analyst can be employed by the hospital and can act as the in-between person, to communicate needs to the software vendor on behalf of the end-users. This can be done in the form of documenting user requirements and how they interact with the system. In this role, they can be responsible for documenting any ongoing changes to the system and researching improvements or integrations that can be added to the system for improved usability.
The work life balance of many of these roles can depend highly on the organization but is generally fair, individuals might only be expected to work overtime during emergency situations.
EHR Analyst: The role of the EHR analyst is similar in job duties to the Clinical Systems Analyst but can be more specialized to a specific EHR. For instance, if your hospital is implementing Cerner, the organization might be looking for someone who is well-versed with Cerner and who can help guide clinicians to use the software in the hospital. On the other hand, Cerner or Epic (popular EHR vendors) might be looking for someone who can help implement this software into different healthcare organizations.
This role might require you to train and educate clinical staff on the use of the EHR. Also, you might act as the in-between person, between the EHR vendor and the clinical team, to communicate gaps or risks to the vendor side, during the implementation process. This job might be more intense, especially around implementation of a new EHR system, might require travelling and overtime work. 
Credits: Photo by Ruthson Zimmerman on Unsplash
Clinical Decision Support Analyst: The focus of this role might be on building reports to help guide evidence-based decisions within the healthcare organization. This can look like an individual analyzing the data and writing queries using SQL programming language, to manipulate and extract, key information from databases. Then carrying out descriptive statistics using programs such as R, Python or SAS and finally, visualizing the analysis, using tools such as: Excel, Crystal Reports, SSRS Reports, Power BI, Qlik and/or Tableau. This role will most likely involve presenting your results to stakeholders and will require strong communication skills to be able to explain technical concepts to a non-technical audience. This role is a good balance between working both your soft skills (i.e., multiple presentations) and your technical skills (i.e., writing SQL queries)
Methodologist: The role of the Methodologist is focused on developing and analyzing research projects. The analysis done in these research projects can help to inform clinical practice and can form relevant benchmarks that healthcare organizations can use as a reference for where they should target their key performance indicators. For example, as a result of an intensive literature review, a healthcare organization can get a sense of what the average hospital re-admission rate should be based on their location and size of organization and how they can work to be below the average.
The role of the methodologist can include carrying out literature reviews of the current body of work, identifying data sources or designing surveys to sample the population. In addition, this role can be quite heavy on the statistical analysis to ensure the correct method is chosen when analyzing and summarizing statistically significant results. This role is quite technical and will most likely require a strong foundation and interest in statistics.
I hope this blog post helps you to understand roles you can apply to within the health informatics field, after you complete your degree. Comment down below, which of these above roles, is the best fit for you?
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