The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on Tuesday that it is launching a career and education opportunity to help healthcare professionals understand and communicate their health informatics skills.
The Department of Labor and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will host an informational event at the US Department in 2021.
Organizers of the event say they hope to provide healthcare professionals with a place to learn and have fun at the same time.
“We’ve seen so much progress over the last year,” said Jessica Johnson, an IT professional at the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
“I’ve been able to focus on more important stuff, like working on nuclear weapons and helping the government with health informatic issues.”
Johnson said she had recently begun a new career as an IT specialist for the Department, and was interested in working on healthcare informatic topics.
“The government needs to be better at managing its healthcare information infrastructure,” Johnson said.
“In my opinion, there are a lot of people that are just starting to figure out what healthcare informats are, and what they can do to help the government better manage it.”
Johnson is one of more than 2,500 applicants for the event, which will be held on October 3.
Participants will receive free training on healthcare information systems, and have the opportunity to learn from healthcare professionals about how they can better manage healthcare informatys data.HHS will award $5,000 to participants and will provide them with the opportunity for a second round of training in the fall of 2021.
The Department of Education is also helping the event with training.
The Education Department has offered healthcare informations training in its Healthcare Information Services training programs for the past several years.
More than 50,000 healthcare professionals have been credentialed in healthcare informa, according to the Healthcare Information Systems Association, and more than 200,000 individuals have applied to the position of healthcare informatus.
Johnson hopes the event will give healthcare professionals an opportunity to meet other healthcare professionals and gain knowledge and experience.
“I think the next step is really just going to be to get these healthcare professionals to be part of the healthcare informatoins team and share with each other,” Johnson explained.