Health Informatics Program Opens Doors to Numerous Positions
Did you know that attending a Health Informatics program
such as Centennial College’s Health Informatics Technology will prepare
you for positions such as: applications developer, health data analyst,
database developer, systems implementation specialist, record assistant
and business/systems analyst? That’s right, attending one offering
allows you to pursue numerous positions within this field that is
concerned with information science, computer science, and health care.
More specifically, according to Wikipedia, it deals with the resources,
devices and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage,
retrieval, and use of information in health and biomedicine. Not only do
health informatics tools include computers but also clinical
guidelines, formal medical terminologies, and information and
communication systems. It is applied to the areas of nursing, clinical
care, dentistry, pharmacy, public health, occupational therapy, and
biomedical research.
At
Centennial College, students with engineering training who attend
Health Informatics courses learn all about the healthcare industry.
Essentially, the program teaches them about healthcare structure and the
health information systems that are available within it. To apply for
this undertaking, Centennial College requires applicants to have
completed at least an Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) or
equivalent or be 19 years of age or older. Applicants interested in
attending Health Informatics courses must also possess Compulsory
English 12C or U or skills assessment, or equivalent and Math 11M or U,
or 12C or U, or skills assessment, or equivalent. Additionally, to
graduate from the program, a Minimum C grade average is required.
For
a total of three years, students of the Health Informatics program
learn about both information technology and healthcare systems. The
skills acquired by graduates enable them to design, develop, modify and
test software for healthcare applications. More specifically, these
skills are obtained through a focus on object-oriented software design
methodologies, user-oriented interface design, structure of healthcare
information systems, telehealth, data security and privacy in healthcare
systems. Additionally, health informatics courses
cover technologies such as C#, Java, J2EE, Oracle, MS-SQL Server, Unix/
Linux, Microsoft’s .NET, HTML/ XML, Rational/ WebSphere, Data
warehousing and Data mining, and BI tools in healthcare systems and
more.
Students
then have an opportunity to apply what they have learned in their
Health Informatics courses to two software development projects in the
field of health informatics. These real world business applications
require students to utilize all the technical, systems and business
skills gained during their studies.
Graduates
of Informatics Technology are able to analyze and model data, develop
healthcare databases and apply different computer medical-imaging
techniques. They are also able to use tools, algorithms and health
informatics methods for hospitals, schools, healthcare agencies and
public health departments.
Qualified
college or university graduates with a background in software gain
direct admission into semester three of this three-year program and
receive their Health Informatics program advanced diploma in four
semesters.
