Lead the Way. Lead informatics management.

The informatics role in the NHS is one of support - it can be thought of as the arteries and veins of the NHS. It needs a strong architecture and infrastructure. It carries the vital elements to keep the NHS 'alive' - but crucially it supports the body of the NHS in supporting the transformation of services and the continual striving of service improvement to the benefit of patients and the public.

There are four core areas of work involved in informatics:

• the coding, collection and storage of data (often called clinical coding)
• the development of technology and systems to process, distribute and present the data (often called information and communication technology (ICT) or IT)
• the management of the data to transform it into meaningful information (often called information management or analysis)
• the contextualising or mobilising of the information in organisations to make it useful knowledge and intelligence to support decision-making (often called knowledge management or knowledge services).

Whatever the area or project, informatics is one of the fastest growing areas in the health sector, leading the way with exciting projects and creative use of IT to improve patient care.

Supporting the NHS

Informatics has a big part to play in realising the vision of the NHS. This is made clear when considering just two of the key NHS national agendas.

The first is 'world-class commissioning'. This is the aspiration of commissioning organisations to manage local health systems, so that best-value and highest quality care outcomes can be attained. To achieve this, we rely on a robust technology infrastructure that enables the commissioners to make informed decisions on behalf of the population to which they are accountable.

The second agenda is the NHS 'Next Stage Review Final Report High Quality Care for All'. This is an ambitious patient-centred framework for the NHS that raises the profile of the quality of care and health-outcome based interventions. One of the challenges for the informatics community is in the measurement of health outcomes, the communication of these to patients and the development of technology to support patients in the right settings - which increasingly will be home or community based.

The challenges for informatics professionals to deliver on this vision are critical to the future running of the NHS. Informatics professionals will be represented at all levels of NHS organisations up to Board level.

Skills required

The skills we look for aren't solely based on technical proficiency. Most important will be the skills required to deal with the complexity of the NHS agenda and the inter- and intra-organisational relationships. We look for individuals with highly developed communication and problem structuring skills and abilities related to transformational change management. You'll also need to be analytical, flexible, creative and innovative.

Visit www.hicf.org.uk where you will find a careers framework for health informatics and will be able to see descriptions for a variety of roles.

Another useful reference site for health informatics is the NHS Connecting for Health's eSpace website.