Developing a Common Reference Model for the Health Informatics Discipline

This study reports on an examination of the IT industry's Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) to determine if such a process and/or the use of this tool is suitable to be applied to the health informatics discipline. During this process, four sets of known and agreed-upon Health Informatics skill and knowledge domain statements and competencies were mapped to SFIA. The results showed that all high level SFIA skills apply to the health informatics discipline but that these need to be contextualized to suit the health industry and additional health industry specific skills and knowledge domains need to be included to truly reflect the necessary health informatics skill set from which competency statements can be developed. Adoption of an accord similar to the Seoul Accord process could be very beneficial in promoting a global understanding of the health informatics discipline.