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.