Spotlight on health informatics specialist nurses: The health intelligence manager
The health informatics specialist role is a diverse one and relevant in all areas of health care. Here, in the first of our series, Rosemary Currell describes her work at Suffolk Primary Care Trust.
At the outset of general nurse training (a very long time ago), I could never have imagined a career in either health informatics or public health and here I am, trying to combine the two!
All our activities in the NHS need robust, up-to-date information and a sound evidence base so my work as the Health Intelligence Manager in the Public Health Directorate of the PCT covers a wide range of issues.
Health improvement and reducing health inequalities are the great challenges for public health locally and nationally, and for community nurses, midwives, health visitors and the others in the frontline public health workforce.
My work is to try to contribute through projects such as health needs assessments for local communities. We look at predicted population growth or decline, deprivation rates, disease prevalence, life expectancy and the health needs of particular populations. Health care needs assessment requires an understanding of evidence based practice and epidemiology as well as care pathways.
The work means bringing together data and information from many different sources, then being able to turn that into useable knowledge for planners, managers and practitioners. It also means being able to help practitioners and others consider how they can make the best use of the information that they collect in their day-to-day work.
Keeping records may seem a chore ... until that information is necessary to demonstrate a need for a change in service or to show how effective a new intervention has been. Then it is vital that practitioners have the data about their own clients and their own practice at their fingertips.