Clinical Tech Trends. Trend: clinical informaticists

The Landscape: With hospitals scrambling to implement EMRs and demonstrate meaningful use through CPOE in order to meet HITECH requirements, CIOs will need embedded clinical informaticists with medical, nursing, and pharmacy backgrounds on their IT teams. At the highest level will be CMIOs and VPs of clinical informatics; but permanent teams of clinical informaticists will be needed.

Though the clinical informaticist staffing model is fairly common in large academic medical centers, its use will rise in smaller hospitals. In addition, the short timeframes for qualifying for HITECH dollars mean that hospitals will have to employ skilled clinical informaticists to ensure fast and reliable implementations. However, with these double-skilled clinicians at a premium, many hospitals will come up short in the talent department unless they recruit or grow from within. In addition, once systems are implemented, these clinicians will be needed to help grow the value of the EMR through data mining and other quality initiatives.