What’s the Career Outlook for Health Information Technology?

When you think about a career in medicine, you don’t immediately consider health information technology as one of the options. Yet, as medical systems are moving more towards being run by computers, IT professionals with a background in medicine or health are becoming more and more critical. Medical information technology careers are among the fastest-growing domains of study over the last few years. The supply of professionals in HIT fails to meet the demands of the industry. As a career, there’s a lot of room for advancement and promotion. What’s more, it allows an individual to perform valuable support in running a medical facility. Patient records and other crucial infrastructure are now moving to a cloud-based architecture, needing trained experts to help run them.

Skilled IT is in Demand in All Areas

The field of medicine isn’t the only one that needs skilled IT professionals. Several industries want the most qualified IT professionals in their support departments, leaving healthcare with a shortage. There’s also the glaring issue of having experts in IT that understand the healthcare system. Trained health information technology practitioners to work in this industry need to have specific training in the field. There are openings in the area for thousands of professionals as support staff in medical institutions.

Lucrative Professions

The most recent statistics demonstrate that HIT experts with experience below the two-year mark could command an annual salary of $62,780. On the upper end of the experience continuum, practitioners with over twenty years within the position could expect to make $122,663 annually. General IT knowledge is the same across all industries. Yet those who preferred to enter this field stood to earn as much as $22,000 more on average than those in other sectors. In healthcare, a background in IT sets you up to enter a highly in-demand field where trained experts are needed.

Positions Available

There are several distinct positions they may find themselves posted in for those looking at entering healthcare Information Technology. A clinical systems analyst has the responsibility of fixing issues that may occur with electronic medical records systems. They typically need an in-depth knowledge of coding and databases. Chief information officers are in charge of all digital patient records and serve as the head of the internal IT department, delegating jobs to other professionals. While these indicate a few of the industry positions, the demand for HIT specialists will continue to grow as time passes. With more and more medical facilities providing electronic-based data to each other, the need for skilled support staff has never been more critical.