A Comparative Literature Analysis of the Health Informatics Curricula

The use of Electronic Medical Information and Health Systems, by both health and IT professionals, support staff and patients, is continually growing. However, to use or develop such systems properly, these users require well-founded training, which has increasingly become part of their formal university education. In this education, a necessary set of health informatics topics need to be covered by lectures for both computer science students, as developers of such systems, and health students, as future users of these systems, to be able to master the needed skills. Within the ERASMUS PLUS HiCure project, which aims to develop an integrated health informatics curricula, this work was conducted to identify the necessary topics and needed skills. To achieve, a literature analysis was conducted to gain a comprehensive insight of existing health informatics curricula and recommendations of both scientific community and professional bodies. This analysis resulted in identifying some key competencies, that students should learn within a health informatics education, to gain the critical skills needed for specifying, evaluating and developing health information systems as well as performing health information management.