Globalisation of health and medical informatics education--what are the issues?

We are witnessing a paradigm shift in higher education as a result of technological advances, adoption of on-line learning and a greater participation in e-commerce by higher education providers. Given the dearth of academics with high-level expertise in health informatics in many countries, we need to explore how best to use our scarce resources to have the greatest possible impact regarding the preparation of health professionals such that they can make the best possible use of available informatics technologies to support health service delivery.

The International Medical Informatics Association's (IMIA) education working group together with its institutional (academic members) is exploring how best to provide global and collaborative health informatics education and research. Central Queensland University (CQU), one of these members, is also working with the Health Level Seven (HL7) organisation to provide specific standards education internationally using flexible delivery methods.

A number of issues requiring further exploration and resolutions have been identified. An overview of these is provided.