The Role of a Health Information Manager in Creating Data Fit for Purpose

When emergency and waiting list data are submitted by health services to the Victorian Department of Health they are not ready for immediate use. Data must undergo further edit and rule checks before they can be declared fit for purpose and made available for internal and external stakeholder use. Further transformation of the data is constantly required to suit individual stakeholder requirements; this requires in-depth knowledge of each dataset. Health Information Managers are especially suited to this role because of their understanding of classification, exposure to the data at hospital-level and general health information management skills.